Galleria Borghese
A small, strictly-timed museum holding one of the greatest private art collections ever assembled — Bernini's most dramatic sculptures and Caravaggio paintings, inside a 17th-century villa in its own park.
Galleria Colonna
One of Rome's grandest private palace galleries, open to the public only two mornings a week — a Baroque great hall so lavish it appeared in the closing scene of Roman Holiday.
Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel
One of the largest and richest museum complexes on earth — miles of papal collections leading to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, the single most-visited work of art in the world.
Galleria Doria Pamphilj
A private noble family's palace and art collection, still lived in and owned by their descendants — Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X and Caravaggio's Rest on the Flight into Egypt among 400 years of accumulated masterpieces.
Palazzo Barberini
Rome's national gallery of old masters, inside a Baroque palace with two competing grand staircases by Bernini and Borromini — Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes and Raphael's La Fornarina under a ceiling fresco that swallows the whole room.
Galleria Spada
A small Baroque palace collection famous for one architectural trick — Borromini's forced-perspective corridor, an 8-metre passage engineered to look four times longer than it really is.
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (GNAM)
Italy's national gallery of 19th- and 20th-century art, inside a grand neoclassical building at the edge of Villa Borghese — Canova, Boccioni's Futurism, De Chirico, Klimt and Van Gogh under one roof, with barely any crowds.
MAXXI — National Museum of 21st Century Arts
Zaha Hadid's swooping concrete museum of contemporary art and architecture — the building itself is usually the main event, more than any single exhibition inside it.