The 10 Best Under-the-Radar Museums in Rome

Tucked away behind Piazza Navona, this small museum is housed in a 15th-century palace once home to Cardinal Altemps. It’s filled with ancient sculptures and reliefs from the collections of some of the city’s most powerful aristocratic families and is one of the sites that makes up the Museo Nazionale Romano. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the museum is the gorgeous frescoes in the loggia, painted in the grotesque (as in inspired by grottoes) style that was popular during the Renaissance.

Rome is an ancient city that’s constantly being updated for modern times, and nowhere else is that as poignantly on view as at the Centrale Montemartini in the hip neighborhood of Ostiense. Occupying the city’s first electrical power plant, it displays ancient sculptures of men and women in togas from the collections of the Capitoline Museums against a backdrop of early 20th-century industrial relics. There are also some incredible mosaics and the 19th-century train carriage of Pope IX on display.

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Located on the edge of the leafy Villa Borghese park in a Beaux-Arts building constructed in 1911 for the World Exposition in Rome, this museum boasts one of Italy’s best collections of modern art. You’ll find paintings by familiar names like Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas and an impressive collection of works from the Italian modernist movement.

Most people go to Trastevere for the lively restaurants and bars, but the neighborhood is also home to this hidden gem. Back when the area was considered the countryside, wealthy banker Agostino Chigi built this villa and commissioned a few painters, including a prominent young artist named Raphael, to paint frescoes on the interior walls. The scene he chose depicts the marriage of Cupid and Psyche in honor of Chigi’s wedding to courtesan Francesca Ordeaschi. Many lavish banquettes were held here during the Renaissance, but now you can admire the undisturbed frescoes.

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The aforementioned Agostino Chigi also hired Raphael to paint a chapel within the Church of Santa Maria della Pace, which is visible from a window on the upper floor of this museum that once housed a cloister attached to the church. Nowadays, it puts on some of the most provocative contemporary art exhibitions, from a Bansky exhibit to a retrospective of Michelangelo Pistoletto, a leader in the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s.

Built for the powerful Barberini family, this museum inside a 17th-century palace just off Piazza Barberini was designed by Carlo Moderno and the baroque master Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Inside, you’ll find works of art like Raphael’s La Fornarina (a portrait of his lover, who was reputedly a baker’s daughter in Trastevere), Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, and a ceiling painted by Pietro da Cortona in the grand ballroom.

Though it’s right on the bustling Via del Corso, this museum inside the palace of the aristocratic Doria Pamphilj family never seems to get crowded. Head upstairs to admire the hall of mirrors and the galleries lined with paintings by Caravaggio, Velázquez, Raphael, and more. For an additional €5, you can visit the “secret apartment” that’s supposedly still used by the princess. Filled with family photos, furniture, and personal possessions, it might make you feel like you’ve stepped into a scene from Paolo Sorrentino’s film La Grande Bellezza.

There are many aristocratic palaces in Rome, but this one might be the most splendid of them all. Still partly inhabited by the Colonna family, which lived there for more than 20 generations, it’s only open on Friday and Saturday mornings. It’s worth seeing the Great Hall, which stood in for Princess Ann’s palace in Roman Holiday. In the Colonna Gallery, you can gaze upon The Bean Eater by Annibale Caracci, which supposedly inspired Degas and Van Gogh. The gardens are also quite beautiful.

This museum’s name is an acronym for Museo delle Arti del XXIe Secolo (museum of 21^st-century art), proving there’s much more than ancient sculptures and Renaissance paintings to be seen. The building itself—a futuristic feat by the late Zaha Hadid—is worth trekking out to the Flaminio neighborhood to see. The permanent collection includes works by Alighiero Boetti, Francesco Clemente, William Kentridge, and Gerhardt Richter, to name a few.

Another masterpiece of contemporary architecture (this one by French architect Odile Decq), the Museo dell’Arte Contemporaneo di Roma (Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome) is housed in the old Peroni brewery in an off-the-beaten-path area. It focuses on Italian and international art from the 1960s to today. Admission is free.