The grandiose exhibition, which was designed by the English star architect David Chiepperfield, can be seen in a side wing of the Capitol Museum.
A total of 90 ancient sculptures collected by the influential Roman Torlonia family. it is the largest private collection of classical sculptures in the world.
Unique reliefs, sarcophagi and sculptures: small testimonies to the cultural richness of the ancient world. Cardinal Alessandro Albani, for whom Johann Joachim Winckelmann worked, collected many of these gems.
Most of these finds described and cataloged by the German founder of archeology from 1758 onwards. Winckelmann, who in 1763 by Pope Klemens XIII. was appointed Commissario delle Antichità in the Vatican, published a year later, in 1764, his groundbreaking work "The History of Ancient Art".
In total, the Torlonia collection includes over 620 exhibits. For years the Italian Ministry of Culture has been looking for a suitable museum in which these finds can be appropriately presented. Unique evidence that vividly demonstrates how Roman culture took up and developed the motifs of ancient Greece.
