Originally posted on July 10, 2012 by Canicus

Two Roman Museums

Today I visited the Roman National Museum and the Roman Epigraphical Museum. The former contains a lot of Roman sculpture on its main two floors. The top floor contains a lot of frescoes and mosaics as well as some preserved rooms. The basement contains a lot of common artifacts – jewelry, tools and the like. One of the most extensive collection of Roman and Italian coins in the world is on display in the basement as well. The exhibit includes lumps of bronze dating to probably the 5th century BC, hundreds of bronze, silver and gold coins of the Roman Republic and Imperial periods right up to the Euro coins.

The other museum is located across the street in what was the Baths of Diocletian. It focuses on inscriptions, but there are other items of interest including a lot of ossiaries.

One of the tricks in doing this is that you can buy an Archaeological Card without dealing with lines. The card is good for 7 days and gets you into the Coliseum, the Palatine, the Forum, the Baths of Caracalla and five other sites. About the only two major museums not on the list are the Capitoline Museum and the Vatican Museum.

Today I was robbed. It was the classic heist. I was eating lunch at a sidewalk restaurant. A man came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder to distract me while his accomplice lifted my camera case. I’ll write it off as a botched job though. The contents of the bag are worth less than $100, all replaceable. And mostly utterly useless without a Canon PowerShot camera. They did not take the $500 camera next to the case.

Canicus Modius