The Capitoline museum in Rome which have now reopened to the public after a long period of restoration of the palaces which stand around the piazza (the whole complex conceived by Michelangelo), offer the visitor a wonderful itinerary: the Palazzo dei Conservatori, with its Exhedra of Marcus Aurelius and picture gallery, the Palazzo Nuovo, the Tabularium (ancient records offices) with its Galleria Lapidaria (collection of epigraphs) and the Palazzo Clementino Caffarelli, which contains the Capitoline medals collection and holds temporary exhibitions.
The Capitoline collection, founded in1471 by pope Sixtus IV with the donation to the Roman people of the bronze statues of the Lateran (the she-Wolf, the “Spinario”, or Boy extracting a thorn from his foot, the “Camillus” and the colossal head of the emperor-king Costantine with its hand and orb), is regarded as the oldest public museum in the world.
