After decades locked away in a Rome basement, some of the finest sculptures from antiquity have been pulled from the gloom and returned to public view.

Busts of Roman emperors, intricate sarcophagi and an ancient Greek relief carved 2,500 years ago are just some of the 92 pieces put on display in Villa Caffarelli, part of the ancient city's Capitoline Museums.

The marbles belong to the aristocratic Torlonia family and represent a fraction of the 620 sculptures in their possession, believed to be the largest such private collection in the world.

"This is an opportunity to see a number of works that are extremely important, that everybody knows from books but nobody has seen," said Salvatore Settis, who co-curated the show and had the difficult task of deciding what works should see the light of day.

Like many leading Rome families, the Torlonias put their huge collection on display in a museum, but after 101 years, they locked its doors in 1976, looking to convert the building into private apartments.

"The reappearance of such a legendary collection is a very important event," said Settis. "When I saw them for the first time it was very emotional because I knew most of those pieces from books, but I had never seen them."

The Torlonias, who built their wealth off the back of papal contracts, snapped up established collections, some dating back to the 15th century, making it a collection of collections.

Among the pieces on view is a fountain basin carved in ancient Greece that was believed to have stood in the garden of Julius Caesar when it was already considered an antiquity.

Many of the works have undergone substantial restoration over the years, including a statue of a goat whose body dates to the first century AD but whose head is believed to have been created by the famed 17th century Italian sculptor, Bernini.

Many of the pieces were already restored after the year 1600, and experts who have worked for the past four years to restore the works had only to work on the surfaces of the antiquities by cleaning them and removing the dust that had accumulated over the years.

During the recent restoration process, rare traces of red polychromy paint were found on a Roman relief (meaning figures are projected from the top of a background plane) of a busy port scene that dates back to the year 200 A.D.

The detailed relief shows a large ship at the port, with the mythical symbol of a she-wolf seen on the sails at the 'Portus Augusti' port, which was constructed by ancient Roman Emperor Claudius in the year 42 A.D.

Another highlight of the collection is a statue of a divinity from around the second-century A.D. known as "Hestia Giustiniani", which is a Roman copy of a Greek bronze statue from around 470 B.C.

The "Torlonia Marbles" will remain on display in Rome until June 2021 and are then expected to be shown in at least one other European country and in the United States before returning to Italy and being housed in a permanent museum.

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