Barraco Museum

The Barracco Museum in Corso Vittorio in Rome boasts the prestigious and peculiar collection of antique sculpture donated to Rome by the rich Calabrese collector Giovanni Barracco in 1904. Initially exposed in a classical building by Gaetano Koch, after its demolition n 1938 due to the opening of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the collection was housed in the Capitoline Museum and finally moved to the elegant sixteenth century building erected for the Breton Thomas Le Roy in 1516 and probably designed by Antonio da Sangallo the younger, best-known as “Piccola Farnesina ai Baullari” because of its proximity to Palazzo Farnese and its likeness to Villa Farnesina in Trastevere. The complex collection comprises Assyrian, Egyptian, Cypriot, Phoenician, Etruscan, Greek and Roman art; between the many masterpieces and important pieces of art exposed we mention the precious Assyrian wall decorations from the palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh and Sennacherib at Nimrud, the unusual section dedicated to Cypriot art, a series of Greek works related to the great 5th century BC artist Polyclitus and his school and the head of a boy from the Julian family. Last but not least a polychrome mosaic of the Church of Rome from the first basilica of St. Peter in Rome, dating to the 12th century AD.