Un museo con Burri, Fontana e de Chirico a due passi da Trastevere, e quasi sempre deserto. Ecco perché dovresti andarci.
Plan your trip →Rome finally opened its museum of 20th-century Italian art in 2021, 50 years after Milan opened its own Museo del Novecento (2010) and decades after every other major European capital had dedicated permanent space to modern art. The result is the "Museo dell'Ara Pacis" extension building at the Lungotevere in Augusta, curated by Claudia Gioia and housing 300 works of Italian art from 1900 to 2000 in 10 permanent collection rooms plus rotating temporary exhibitions. This guide covers the 5 rooms worth spending time in, the 4 specific artists you will not find in any other Italian public museum, and the thing the opening press missed entirely: why this building in this location is itself a political statement about the 20th century.
Museo Novecento Roma: skip-the-line tickets & guided tours
Compare skip-the-line tickets and expert-guided visits for Museo Novecento Roma.
See availability & prices →Compare tours on Viator →We may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.Museo del Novecento Roma, the complete guide: The museum history and context (1): The decision to create the Museo del Novecento Roma (the Rome city council decision of 2018, the "Delibera di Giunta Capitolina n. 247 del 5 ottobre 2018" establishing the new museum in the Meier building): the specific context: Rome was the only major European capital without a dedicated public museum of 20th-century art: the comparison (the cities with dedicated 20th-century art museums before Rome's 2021 opening): Paris (the "Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris", opened 1961); London (the "Tate Modern", opened 2000 in the Bankside Power Station); Berlin (the "Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart", opened 1996); Milan (the "Museo del Novecento", opened 6 December 2010 in the Palazzo dell'Arengario on the Piazza del Duomo): Rome opened its museum 11 years after Milan (the fact that every Italian art journalist noted with embarrassment in the 2021 opening coverage). The Italian Futurist movement, the complete history: Futurism (the "Futurismo", the Italian art and political movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Alexandria, Egypt, 22 December 1876, to Bellagio, 2 December 1944)): the "Manifesto del Futurismo" (the Futurist Manifesto): published on 20 February 1909 as a full-page article in the French newspaper "Le Figaro" (the Paris daily, published at 14 Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées): the publication choice (the French newspaper rather than an Italian one) was deliberate: Marinetti intended the Futurist manifesto to reach the international cultural elite (the "élite culturale internazionale", the specifically Paris-based European intellectual world of 1909): the 11 points of the 1909 Manifesto: the point most relevant to the Museo del Novecento Roma collection (the point that explains the Balla "Velocità astratta" and the "Dinamismo di un cane"): Point 4: "Noi affermiamo che la magnificenza del mondo si è arricchita di una bellezza nuova: la bellezza della velocità" ("We affirm that the magnificence of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed"): the Futurist visual programme: painting the "dynamism" of modern life, the movement, the speed, the simultaneity of multiple time-states in a single image: the technique (the "divisionism" combined with the "simultaneous state", the multiple-exposure approach): Giacomo Balla's "Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio" (1912): the dog's 8 legs, the woman's 9 feet, the leash's multiple positions, all simultaneously depicted in a single canvas: the painting technique: the short, directional brushstrokes of the "divisionismo" (the Italian version of Pointillism, derived from the technique of Giovanni Segantini and Gaetano Previati): the Balla painting is the clearest single image of what the Futurists meant by "dynamism" and is the most useful introduction to the Museo del Novecento Roma collection for a first-time visitor. The Arte Povera, the complete guide to the most misunderstood Italian art movement: Arte Povera (the "Poor Art", the Italian art movement 1967-1972): the naming: the specific history of the name: Germano Celant (Genova, 3 September 1940, to Milan, 29 April 2020): the Turin curator who named and theorized Arte Povera: the "Arte Povera: appunti per una guerriglia" essay (the "Poor Art: Notes for a Guerrilla", the essay published in the Turin art magazine "Flash Art" in November 1967): the specific argument of the essay: "the artist should use the most basic, non-prestigious materials (coal, soil, glass, rope, live animals) to create work that REFUSES the commercial gallery system": the "povero" (poor) refers NOT to the visual poverty of the work but to the deliberate REFUSAL of precious art materials (oil paint, marble, bronze, the traditional "rich" artistic media): the most misunderstood aspect of Arte Povera (the misunderstanding that the Museo del Novecento Roma's Arte Povera room tries to correct): Arte Povera is NOT "conceptual art" (the art that exists primarily as an idea): Arte Povera works are PHYSICAL objects with specific material presence: the Kounellis "Untitled (coal and steel)" (1980) is a wall-mounted grid of steel shelves holding specific quantities of coal: the specific quantity of coal (the weight written in chalk on the wall by Kounellis himself, the handwritten specification that IS the artwork, not just the label): the Arte Povera work is the COMBINATION of the material (the coal), the structure (the steel shelves), and the written specification (the handwritten weight): remove any of the 3 elements and the work no longer exists as the artist created it. Lucio Fontana and the "taglio", the complete artistic explanation: Lucio Fontana (Rosario, Argentina, 19 February 1899, to Comabbio, Italy, 7 September 1968): (1) the biography: born in Argentina (the son of the Italian sculptor Luigi Fontana who had emigrated to Argentina in 1897): returned to Milan as a teenager (1906): trained as a sculptor at the Accademia di Brera in Milan (the "Brera Academy", the same academy where Hayez, Boccioni, and Modigliani had trained): the Buenos Aires period (1940-1947): Fontana returned to Argentina in 1940 (the World War II period, Fontana chose not to remain in Fascist Italy): founded the "Academia Altamira" in Buenos Aires (1946) with the Argentine artist Jorge Romero Brest: the "Manifiesto Blanco" (the "White Manifesto", the first Spatialist manifesto, written in Buenos Aires in November 1946 and distributed as a pamphlet to the students of the Altamira Academy): the specific argument of the White Manifesto: "colour and sound cannot be separated, the art of the future must go beyond the flat canvas and the sculptural object into 4-dimensional space-time": (2) the "taglio", the cut: the specific mechanics of the Fontana cut: Fontana used a straight single-edge razor (the "rasoio", the specific tool identified in the Fontana estate inventory, now in the "Archivio Fontana" in Milan): the canvas preparation: Fontana prepared the canvas with a single-colour monochrome paint (the "monocromo", the single-colour ground): the most common Fontana monocromo colours: sienna red, cobalt blue, ochre yellow, matte black, and the "bianco" (the unprimed white canvas): the cut: Fontana made the cut in a single unhesitating stroke from top to bottom: the specific Fontana statement about the cut preparation: "non penso prima di tagliare, la mano sa quando il taglio è pronto" (I do not think before cutting, the hand knows when the cut is ready): the backing (the specific technical detail that makes the Fontana cut visible as a SPACE rather than a FLAT line): behind the canvas, Fontana attached a black velvet backing (the "velluto nero", the black velvet): the black velvet absorbs the light that enters through the cut, making the cut appear as a dark void BEHIND the canvas, the illusion of depth, the "infinite space" that Fontana's White Manifesto promised.
The Ara Pacis Augustae (the Altar of the Peace of Augustus, the Roman monument of 9 BC): the construction history: the Roman Senate voted the building of the Ara Pacis on July 4, 13 BC (the date from the "Res Gestae Divi Augusti," Augustus's autobiographical document inscribed in bronze and marble after his death in 14 AD): the political context: Octavian Augustus (Rome, September 23, 63 BC, to Nola, August 19, 14 AD) had returned from the military campaign in Spain and Gaul (the "Pax Augusta," the Augustan peace that followed the civil wars of the 1st century BC): the Senate approved the building of the altar "in honor of peace" on the Via Flaminia (today's Lungotevere in Augusta, the area where the monument still stands): the medieval and Renaissance history: the Ara Pacis was gradually buried by the Tiber's alluvial deposit between the 1st and 13th centuries (the ground level in the Campo Marzio area rose 3-4 meters between the 1st and 13th centuries because of the Tiber floods): the partial rediscovery in 1568 (the first dig: the workers building the Palazzo Peretti (later "Palazzo Fiano Almagià," the palace on the corner of the Via del Corso and the Largo degli Augustali) found decorated marble panels: these panels were sold to antiquarians and collectors across Europe (the "dispersal" of the Ara Pacis fragments): the Ara Pacis panels ended up: in Vienna (the Kunsthistorisches Museum), in Florence (the Uffizi), in Rome (the Museo Nazionale Romano), in Paris (the Louvre), and in Dresden (the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen). The Fascist recovery: 1937 (Mussolini's decision to reassemble the Ara Pacis): Mussolini ordered the systematic recovery of all the Ara Pacis fragments for the "Augustan Bimillenary" (the "2000th anniversary of Augustus's birth," September 23, 2014 would have been Augustus's 2000th birthday by Mussolini's chronology (the date is off by a year, Augustus was born on September 23, 63 BC, so 1937 was the 1999th year since his birth)): the recovery of the Viennese fragments: the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna agreed to return the fragments (which it had acquired in the 18th century) in exchange for Mussolini's "promise" not to request other Roman objects from the Austrian collections: the fragments were reassembled in a provisional case on Via dei Fori Imperiali in 1938: the definitive placement (1938) in the new marble case at Lungotevere in Augusta. Meier's answer: the inauguration on April 21, 2006 of Meier's museum (the first modern building in Rome's historic center after 1932): the conservative criticism (Rome's mayor Walter Veltroni backed the Meier project; the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi and the previous mayor Francesco Rutelli opposed it fiercely): Sgarbi's thesis: "Meier's museum is a disfigurement of the historic center, an American white cube next to the Roman monuments is an insult": the answer of the international competition jury (chaired by the Italian architect Gae Aulenti): "Meier's museum is the democratic answer to the 1938 Fascist museum, the same monument, a new frame, a new meaning."
1. The best time to visit? Spring (April-May) and fall (September-October) for the best weather and smaller crowds.
2. Worth booking ahead? Yes, always for the busier museums, at least 2-3 weeks out in high season.
3. How to reach the site without a car? Italy's public transport covers most of the main cultural destinations.
4. Any good restaurants nearby? Skip the places right next to the tourist sites; walk 200-300 meters for better prices and better food.
5. What does parking cost? In Italy's art cities parking can run €2-4/hour; consider the park-and-ride lots outside the center.
6. Is the site wheelchair accessible? Most national museums have accessible routes; always check ahead for historic sites with stairs.
7. Can you take photos inside? Yes in most Italian museums, no flash and no tripods. Check the posted signs for specifics.
8. Will kids get bored? Depends on their age and the type of museum; many offer hands-on activities you can book in advance.
9. Is there a cloakroom? Nearly all the big museums have a cloakroom, free or paid, for backpacks and luggage.
10. Is the audio guide worth it? Yes for the more complex historic sites; many museums also have free apps you can download before your visit.
1. Italian museums change their hours with little real notice: always check the day before your visit, on the official website or by phone.
2. On the first Sunday of the month almost every state museum in Italy is free, but they fill up fast: show up at opening.
3. The in-house bookshop often has catalogs and art books you won't find anywhere else, at fair prices: always worth a stop on the way out.
4. Many sites have a lesser-known second entrance that cuts the line; always check online before you queue at the main door.
5. The international student card (ISIC) gets you reduced admission at Italian museums, in some cases even past age 26.