CAPITOLINE MUSEUMS

The Roman Capitol, il Campidoglio, one of the most perfect architectural spaces in the world, surrounded by one of its greatest museums: who can resist such wonders? The basic layout existed in 1539 when the city governors, the Conservatori, started work on Michelangelo’s design which so deftly adapted the old buildings and brilliantly recast their facades in his muscular classicism. His design was not completed with the palaces, finished in 1654, but with his famous star-patterned paving, below left, not laid until 1940. Above: one of the Dioscuri – Castor or Pollux? – with his horse at the top of the Cordonata staircase.

The museums began in 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV gave the city a collection of bronzes including the famous, 500BC suckling She-Wolf, to which he added the infants Romulus and Remus. The scale of many of the pieces is staggering, like the fragments of a great marble statue of Constantine, pictured above right while being expertly measured by my assistant. A roomful of Caesars, below, and endless further rooms crammed with marvels, and with the added beauty and drama of evening sunlight. The black marble Old Centaur was found at Hadrian’s Villa in 1736; below it, the colossal bronze head and hand, again of Constantine, were part of the original collection of 1471. Sadly, they’ve recently been removed from this wonderful, frescoed hall where they looked so magnificent, and placed in a drab, modern extension: some of their magic has gone.