Housed in the 16th century Renaissance Villa Giulia is the National Etruscan Museum and you really shouldn’t miss this important collection dedicated to the Etruscan civilisation.

The museum was opened in 1889 and was moved to the Villa in the 20th century. The building itself was once the property of popes, built for Pope Julius III by Giacomo Barozzi da Vignda. When the Papal States ceased to exist in 1870, the Villa was seized by the Kingdom of Italy. It was occupied by royal family members and visiting officials until being given to the museum.

The museum’s collection may seem a bit morbid, dwelling as it does on many funerary monuments, burial relics and jewellery, but most of the artefacts are well preserved and beautifully executed, such as the Tita Vendia Vase, a wine jug dating back to 620 BC.

You will see the wonderful terracotta sarcofago degli sposi, a funerary monument representing a couple in a reclining position. Two other funerary monuments of note are 6th century BC sculptures, one of a centaur, the other of a youth on the back of a sea monster. There is also an acroterion statue of Apollo and the head of a Gorgon, both created in the 6th century BC.

The collection of jewellery is quite extensive and includes 8th century BC fibulae (brooches) made of gold, amber and bronze. You will also see various perfume jars from the 7th century BC sculpted to represent the human body. Don’t miss the Pyrgi Tablets: 3 golden sheets of a dedication, by the King of Caere to the goddess Astarte. These tablets were made in 500 BC and were written in both the Etruscan and Phoenician languages.

Rome is renowned for its beautiful churches, its museums and art galleries dedicated to Ancient Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, all of which are wonderful to visit, but if after a few days you start getting a bit stir-crazy gazing at endless Madonnas and statues of Roman emperors, why not visit the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, which will give you another idea of excellent Italian art.

The museum was started 1883 in the Exposition Palace built by Pio Piacentini. It moved to its present location on via delle Belle Art in 1915. It has 75 rooms displaying Neo-Classical and Romantic sculptures and paintings by 19th and 20th century Italian and foreign artists,.

The collection is organised around various schools of art including Symbolism, the Neo-Renaissance Decadent Movement, Italian verismo and Secessionism. Italian artists include Balla, De Chirico (the founder of the Metaphysical Movement) and Morandi.

Among the foreign artists you will find fine examples of works by Cézanne, Degas, Kandinsky, Monet, Klimt and Van Gogh among others. There is also a very good collection of statues, including sculptures by Canova, Dupré and Tenerani. The museum has a lovely garden with more statues and beautiful fountains. It’s a great place to sit for a while in the warm afternoon sun.

At any time that you have a couple of hours to spare while you are in Rome, you really should make a reservation to visit the Galleria Borghese which has a wonderful collection of antiquities, paintings and sculptures. Visits are limited to two hours.

The Villa Borghese, which houses the gallery, was built between 1609 and 1618 by Flaminio Ponzio and Giovanni Vasanzio, from designs drawn up by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The cardinal was the nephew of Pope Paul V and as such benefited from the official post of Cardinal Nephew, which gave him great wealth and the right to “confiscate” various art works in the name of the Church. Most of these confiscated items ended up in his private collection.

Despite the cardinal’s somewhat unorthodox approach to building his collection, he was a great lover of art and antiquities. He was the patron of Caravaggio, around whom his collection started.

Today the gallery is composed of 20 rooms on two floors and you can admire Titan’s “Sacred and Profane Love” and two magnificent paintings of the “Disposition”, one by Rubens, the other by Raphael, among other great works. The ground floor is mostly given over to antiquities and there is a superb 3rd century mosaic of gladiators, Canova’s “Venus Victrix” and a wonderful trompe-l’oeil fresco on the ceiling.

You will also see several sculptures by Bernini, another favourite of the cardinal, including “Apollo and Daphne”, “David” and the truly breath-taking “Rape of Proserpina”. This incredible marble sculpture is really life-like – you can see Pluto’s fingers sinking into the flesh of Proserpina’s thigh, and one side of his face is distorted as her hand tries to push him away.

Even if you are not a great fan of modern art, don’t miss a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, called the MACRO, which you will find on Via Reggio Emilia.

This municipal art museum was opened in 2002, built on the site of six old factories that once belonged to the Peroni Brewery. The building is as contemporary as the collections it houses. The architects weren’t allowed to knock down the old factories, so they gutted them, cleaned up the façades, blocked up the old windows and fitted their glass and steel structure within the existing walls. The result is great – a real mixture of the old and the startlingly new.

The inside is totally futuristic, with a red, wooden polygon in the centre of the main atrium, serving as an auditorium. Zigzagging stairways and walkways lead from the atrium to the roof terrace with its central skylight and fountain. Do visit the loos – the washstands are lit from within and change colours. There is an excellent restaurant, a coffee bar and a museum shop.

The MACRO art collection is very good; all contemporary schools are represented here from the nineteen sixties to the present. There are many examples of Abstract Art by Carla Accardi, the co-founder of the Forma 1 Marxist Art Movement. The Art Povera Section displays fine works by Pino Pascali and in the Pop Art Section you will see compositions by Tano Festa and Schifano Maselli, among other artists. Throughout the museum you will see sculptures by Leoncillo and Ettore Colla.

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini is the second branch of the National Gallery of Ancient Art. The palace was designed by Italian architect Carlo Maderno for Pope Urban VIII. The eight rooms of the gallery exhibit works by Raphael and Raffaelleschi, Florentine, Sienese, Leonardeschi and Venetian painters, and has a portraits room as well.

The National Museum of Oriental Art is housed in Palazzo Brancaccio on Via Merulana and you really should visit this interesting museum.

The fifteen rooms of the museum, founded in 1957, hold an important collection of objects and sculptures from the Middle East to Japan. A room dedicated to Korean artefacts was opened in 2010.

The first three rooms are dedicated to the Near and Middle East with bronzes, precious metals and stones and pottery from the ancient civilisations around the Mediterranean, pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia. The fourth room displays objects from Islamic Iran and surrounding Muslim areas with 8th to 12th century ceramics, glass and metal relics.

In the rooms five and eight you will find an important collection from the Gandhara and Swat regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This collection includes stone tools and burnt bones from the Stone Age, terracotta statuettes of pagan gods, coins dating back to 600BC, precious stones such as emerald and reliefs depicting the lives of Buddha.

Rooms six, seven and ten house collections of graphic arts and paintings from the Far East, paintings on textiles, jewellery and ritual objects from Tibet and Nepal and Korean bronzes, seals and ceramics. In the White Room you will find sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses and Buddha’s from India.

The rest of the museum’s collection is from China, Japan and Vietnam, including ceramics, bronzes, statues, paintings, prints and textiles dating from the 3rd century BC to the 20th century.