The Museo di Roma is situated in the Palazzo Braschi on Piazza San Pantaleo, so when you visit this museum, you will get a double treat – that of admiring the exhibitions of this civic museum and seeing the splendours of the beautiful palace that houses them.

The museum displays various exhibitions about the cultural and social Roman way of life from the Middle Ages to the first half of the 20th century. The collection is detailed and offers over 100,000 objects that include ceramics, clothes, drawings, engravings, furniture paintings and photos.

You will also find pieces of architecture and murals saved from churches and other buildings, such as the medieval frescoes from the Church of S. Maria in Vincis and three fragments of 13th century mosaic from the apse vault of St Peter’s Basilica.

There are over 2000 examples of intact pottery and fragments of a 10th century collection of pitchers with a bas-relief in brown glaze. Another fine collection of pottery clearly shows the Arabic influence in Italy in the 12th and 13th centuries. Other pottery from the 17th and 18th centuries bears the coats of arms of various popes.

In another section of the museum you will find over 250 examples of 18th and 19th century clothes, and also tapestries and ceremonial cloths used in religious rites. The ground floor is devoted to carriages and sedan chairs, and here you will find the sedan chair in red morocco and gold belonging to the Braschi family. There are also over 600 items of fine furniture on display.

Rome is full of interesting museums and often the smaller ones are overlooked because a lot of people think they can’t be very interesting because they are small. This is a great shame because the Barracco Museum well worth visiting in spite of its size.

The museum is housed in Farnesina Palace and displays an exquisite collection of over 400 ancient statues, busts and artwork from Assyria, Cypress, Egypt, Etruria, Greece, Phoenicia and Rome. The collection was amassed by Giovanni Barracco, a rich statesman, and donated to the City of Rome in 1904. Barracco was an avid collector and either bought the items you will see on display or recovered them from archaeological digs around the city.

Included in the exhibition is a bust, found in Egypt, of a Roman wearing a diadem and thought to represent Julius Caesar. You will also see Egyptian alabaster funeral urns, which once held the internal organs of the dead. Another Egyptian statue, this time discovered during excavations in Rome, is a 1st century statue of the god Bes, who protected mothers and children.

There is a wonderful display of tablets of cuneiform writing dating back to 3000BC, from Mesopotamia, an original 1st century piece of mosaic using tesserae and depicting two pigeons and a 12th century mosaic from the original St Peter’s Basilica. In the Greek section of the museum, you will find funerary and votive slabs, as well as artefacts and works from Polyclitus, the great artist who lived in the 5th BC.

The National Museum of Rome is comprised of various branches, one of which is the Crypta Balbi which stands on the remains of the 13th century Theatre of Balbus in via delle Botteghe Oscure 31.

During excavations in 1981, the remains of the ancient theatre and artefacts from the medieval occupation of the city were uncovered and are now housed in the museum in the Archaeology Section. In the basement you will find the remains of the theatre, including parts of the columns of the quadriporticus and objects from a nearby statio annonae (a depot where grain from the farm areas was stocked in ancient times).

In the Historical Section are several images that show how Rome looked, from its beginnings to the 20th century. These pictures are accompanied by interesting items from each époque including pottery, fragments of glass objects, seals, ivory and bone. There is also a collection of coins and precious stones that indicate that the area was heavily commercial.

As well as frescoes from the Middle Ages, you will find the fascinating fragments from the “Forma Urbis Romae”, which was once an enormous marble slab depicting a map of Rome under the 3rd century Emperor Septimus Severus. The map was a guide to visitors to the city.

There are lifts between the floors of the museum for the disabled and there is also a small bookshop. You can only visit the basement area with one of the museum guides.

Visiting house museums is always a must if you want to find out how a famous person lived and the Giorgio de Chirico House Museum won’t disappoint you.

The great artist bought an apartment in the Borgognoni Palace and you can visit the entrance hall, the dining room, bedrooms and studio where he lived and worked from 1948 until his death in 1978. On an easel in the studio is his last, unfinished sketch of a bathing woman. You can also see his book collection and his paints and brushes.

In the halls on the 4th floor you will find paintings which include “il Mediatore”, “Donna in Riposo”, “le Maschere” and “Bagnanti”. There are also sculptures and graphics from his personal collection.

Giorgio de Chirico was perhaps the greatest Pre-Surrealist and Surrealist artist in Italy, his work is on a par with Salvatore Dali, but his best works were executed between 1909 and 1919 during his Metaphysical Period, during which time he founded the Metaphysical School of art movement. Just as his beloved Gala was Dali’s muse, so his wife Isabella was De Chirico’s and there are several portraits of her and she figures in many of his paintings.

In 1939 he adopted Rubens’ Baroque style of art and these works were criticised as not being as good as his early work. So to revenge himself on those he called “ignorant critics” he back-dated some of his paintings, which were then accepted with acclaim.

While you are in Rome, don’t miss a visit to the Keats-Shelley Memorial House situated on the Piazza di Spagna at the foot of the Spanish Steps.

This small house holds a large collection of letters, manuscripts and souvenirs attributed to the two great English poets. You will also find artefacts belonging to Byron, Wordsworth, Elizabeth Browning and Oscar Wilde. It also contains one of the finest libraries of Romantic Literature in the world. The house was bought in 1906 by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. During the Second World War the collection was dismantled and hidden to keep it safe from the Nazis, and was returned to the house at the end of the war.

The poet John Keats lived in the house for several months and died here in 1821. According to the law of that time, because he died of tuberculosis, the house walls were scrubbed and scraped and all its contents were burned. The items on display belonging to Keats were donated by the Association.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a friend of Keats, but he never set foot in the house which is now a memorial to his and Keats’ lives. At the time of Keats’ death, Shelley was living in Pisa, with his wife Mary (the author of Frankenstein). On hearing of Keats’ death, Shelley composed his famous elegy “Adonais” and dedicated it to his friend.

Shelley died a few years later; he was drowned while sailing to Lerici in northern Italy and his boat sank during a storm. His body was washed up several days later and according to quarantine laws, he was cremated on the beach. Many people believe that he was murdered for his political beliefs.

The National Museum of Rome is a vast complex spread out over four buildings and it’s worth taking a packed lunch to avoid missing any part of this fabulous museum.

The museum comprises four parts; the first to be found in a 16th century cloister built by Michelangelo at the site of the Baths of Dioletian which were created in 298AD. This is the main base of the museum where you will see funerary slabs, altars and a section dedicated to Prehistory. Relics of the baths can be seen in the museum’s gardens. The main halls of the baths have been preserved and are used for temporary exhibitions.

The museum opened in 1890 and the cloister and Bath areas were re-adapted and enlarged at the beginning of 1911 for the International Exhibition of Art, the work terminating in the nineteen thirties. Two other buildings connected to the museum are the Crypta Balbi and the Palazzo Altemps.

Another section of the museum is to be found at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, built as a Jesuit seminary in 1887 on the site of a villa that once belonged to Pope Sixtus V. This part of the museum displays iconographic artefacts from the Flavian Age to the end of the late Empire, and 1st century BC frescoes salvaged from imperial villas. There are two fine copies of “The Discus Thrower” by Myron. There is a mummy in its sarcophagus with jewellery items, found in 1964 on via Cassia. There is also an important coin and jewellery collection and many statues.