A selection of non touristic Rome museums

Non Touristic Rome Museums

Rome is often considered a true open-air museum. Actually it is a city where, thanks to its nearly 3.000 year history, a mere walk through the city center is sufficient to find many examples of art and culture left by men over the centuries. In addition to this, there are also many museums well known and appreciated abroad; at the top of the list there are surely the Vatican Museums.

These collect in the same space, the Vatican Pinacoteca, the Egyptian and the Etruscan Museums, plus some of the most renowned classical sculptures and the most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world, besides of course the Sistine Chapel.

But this post won’t talk about the places that everybody knows, it would be a little boring… so get ready to read about some places that even many of the locals don’t know about!

Centrale Montemartini

Definitely a museum out of the box, simply because it was not born as a museum! Indeed it was a power plant opened in 1912 in the neighborhood of Testaccio, a working-class district now full of bars, restaurants and nightclubs, where at that time the municipality of Rome had identified an industrial development area. The General Markets and the Gasometer were located here too.
After half century of activity, around 1960, the plant became obsolete, the electricity production was suspended and the building was abandoned. This was the situation until 1997 when the electricity company of the city decided to start a restoration process that constituted an episode of preservation of the industrial archeology of the city. 

The curious thing is that the company not only restored the plant; in the halls of the first public Roman power plant they have also installed a permanent exhibition entitled “The machines and the gods”. In this place, two diametrically opposed worlds (the classical and the industrial one) create a very suggestive atmosphere. Here, a game of contrasts merges the old machinery and the gigantic (!) diesel engines with art work by some of the greatest masters of ancient sculpture and precious artifacts; a place frozen in time between the last century and the ancient Roman era. On the official website of the museum, available in English, you can find all the useful information to visit it.

Galleria Borghese

Surrounded by the homonymous park, this gallery is one of my favorite Renaissance museums because only here, you’ll be able to see some of the most representative sculptures and paintings of the renowned Caravaggio, Bernini and Canova. Most of the work, in fact, cannot be moved from the palace because they are just too delicate, too big and/or located on too fragile of a support. Hence, it will never be possible to transfer them in one of the temporary exhibitions around the world; they are exactly like the Colosseum or the St. Peter Basilica, you can see them only in Rome or in a picture, no alternatives!

The palace is an authentic gem. In just 20 never crowded rooms, you’ll be able to appreciate from every angle (for example): the impressive “David with Head of Goliath” painting, a Caravaggio’s head self-portrait; the Bernini’s life-sized marble sculpture “Apollo and Daphne”, representing the Nymph metamorphosis and the pain suffered by every lover; the Canova’s “Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victorious”, one of the most beautiful example in the world of a semi-nude neo-Classical sculpture.

To limit the crowd, visitors are admitted every day but only at specific intervals, so you have to pre-book your ticket and get in at the indicated entry time.

Supernatural experiences

A city with millennial history will surely have some tenebrous places where reality begins to lose the solidity we are used to. One of these places is surely the underground Neopythagorean Basilica of Porta Maggiore: tomb or funerary basilica, nymphaeum or, more likely, a temple. The functionality of this place, built during the first half of the 1st century AD by an esoteric-mystical sect, is still uncertain. Since April 2015 it’s possible to visit it on specific Sundays. Here is all the info… ready to meet a ghost?

If you are passionate about supernatural events you should have a walk in the Lungotevere Prati street, just 5 minutes walking from the Palazzaccio (the overly decorated Palace of Justice) in the area of the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Here you will find a little church in neo-gothic style (a little Duomo of Milan) “leaning” against a modern building. In 1897, after a fire in the chapel, the parish priest found on the wall behind the altar the image of a human face bearing a melancholic expression, impressed by the flames.

This episode resulted in the foundation of the Museum of the Souls of Purgatory, a little collection of evidences from all over Europe of similar facts. The preserved documents and finds show how the deceased, in order to purify themselves from their sins, would seek to attract the attention of the living to ask for their prayers, the only way to facilitate their passage into heaven.

Contemporary and Street Art

The MAXXI museum, an acronym for Museum of Art of XXI century, is the Roman home of “our lifetime” produced art. With permanent collections of famous artists and temporary exhibitions it deserves a visit just to see the building itself, a masterpiece of modern architecture. Not everybody knows that if you are visiting the place during the month of October, it will be sufficient to cross the street and you’ll be inside an abandoned police station where once in a year the Outdoor Festival takes place. Urban artists from different countries of the world take possession of the area a few weeks before the beginning of the festival and turn it in a temporary exhibition of marvelous graffiti and murals. 

Yes, people already know that the best museum in Rome is the city itself, but not everybody knows that Rome is also a contemporary open-air museum! So, if you are not in Rome during the month of October you can still enjoy the Urban Art Decorations. The venue is spread over 150 streets of 30 districts, from the city center to the suburbs… a collection of more than 300 works of art that can be visited for free, you just need enough breath to walk around the city! Here you can download the Street Art Map and in the Google Play and Apple Store there’s also the free and constantly updated app with a navigable map and relevant info about the art work.