Dating to 1471, the Capitoline Museums are the world's oldest public museums. Their collection of classical sculpture is one of Italy's finest, including crowd-pleasers such as the iconic Lupa capitolina (Capitoline Wolf), a sculpture of Romulus and Remus under a wolf, and the Galata morente (Dying Gaul), a moving depiction of a dying Gaul warrior. There's also a formidable picture gallery with masterpieces by the likes of Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens and Caravaggio.
Note that ticket prices go up when there's a temporary exhibition on.
The museums' entrance is in Palazzo dei Conservatori , where you'll find the original core of the sculptural collection on the 1st floor and the Pinacoteca (picture gallery) on the 2nd floor.
Before you head upstairs, take a moment to admire the ancient masonry littered around the ground-floor courtyard , most notably a mammoth head, hand and foot. These all come from a 12m-high statue of Constantine that originally stood in the Basilica di Massenzio in the Roman Forum.
Of the sculpture on the 1st floor, the Etruscan Lupa Capitolina is the most famous. Donated to the Roman people by Pope Sixtus IV, the 5th-century-BC bronze wolf stands over her suckling wards, who were added in 1471. Other highlights include the Spinario, a delicate 1st-century-BC bronze of a boy removing a thorn from his foot, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Medusa . Also on this floor, in the modern Esedra di Marco Aurelio , is the original of the equestrian statue that stands outside in Piazza del Campidoglio.
Upstairs, the museums' picture collection is on show in the Pinacoteca . Each room harbours masterpieces, but two stand out: the Sala Pietro da Cortona , which features Pietro da Cortona's famous depiction of the Ratto delle sabine (Rape of the Sabine Women), and the Sala Santa Petronella , named after Guercino's huge canvas Seppellimento di Santa Petronilla (The Burial of St Petronilla). This airy hall also boasts two important works by Caravaggio: La buona ventura (The Fortune Teller; 1595), which shows a gypsy pretending to read a young man's hand but actually stealing his ring; and San Giovanni Battista (St John the Baptist; 1602), a sensual and unusual depiction of the New Testament saint.
A tunnel links Palazzo dei Conservatori to Palazzo Nuovo on the other side of the square via the Tabularium , ancient Rome's central archive, beneath Palazzo Senatorio .
Palazzo Nuovo contains some real show-stoppers. Chief among them is the Galata morente, a Roman copy of a 3rd-century-BC Greek original that touchingly depicts the anguish of a dying Gaul warrior. Another superb figurative piece is the Venere Capitolina (Capitoline Venus), a sensual yet demure portrayal of the nude goddess.
