Discover Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia

The Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia holds Italy's national collection of Etruscan antiquities, in a villa built as a summer residence for Pope Julius III between 1551 and 1553.

The building is a collaboration, and a contested one. Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola designed the main block; Bartolomeo Ammannati designed the nymphaeum and the garden structures, including the great loggia over the first courtyard; Michelangelo supplied a project for the casino that was not the one built; and Giorgio Vasari claimed to have been the first to design and create the entire conception.

The museum was founded in 1889. Its best-known object is the Sarcophagus of the Spouses, terracotta, which the museum dates to 530-520 BCE and gives as found at Cerveteri. Wikipedia dates it 530-510; the museum dates its own object.

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 08.30-19.30, with rooms closing at 19.00 and last admission at 18.30. Admission EUR 13, reduced EUR 2.

A villa built as a sequence of outdoor rooms, each one lower than the last. The front to the city is rectangular and relatively severe — Vignola's two-storey facade, with a triple rhythm of a fully detailed triumphal arch at its centre. Behind it the building opens into a semicircular courtyard, and the contrast between the straight street front and the curved garden front is the whole architectural idea.

Beyond the courtyard the ground drops into the nymphaeum, Ammannati's masterwork: three levels of covered loggias with marble statues and balustrades, arranged around a central fountain and sunk below the garden, built to be cool in the Roman summer. The great loggia of Ammannati looks over the first courtyard from above.

Four names attach to the design and they do not resolve neatly. Vignola is credited with the main building. Ammannati with the nymphaeum and the garden. Michelangelo provided a project for the casino which was not the plan executed. Vasari asserted that he had been the first to design and create the entire conception of the property — an assertion this page reports rather than settles.

It was built fast, for a pope who wanted somewhere to spend the summer, and it was finished in about two years. Construction ran from 1551 to 1553 on a site outside the city, which is what allowed the plan to spread sideways into courtyards and gardens instead of upward into a palace.

The division of labour is the interesting part of the construction history. The main block went to Vignola; the water architecture — the sunken nymphaeum, its three loggia levels, the fountain, the garden structures — went to Ammannati, who was a sculptor as much as an architect, which shows in the statues and balustrades that are part of the structure rather than added to it.

Adapting it to a museum came much later: the national Etruscan museum here was founded in 1889.

What time does it really close? The museum closes at 19.30, the rooms at 19.00, and last admission is 18.30. All three are published and the last one is the one that matters.

Is the villa itself worth seeing, or only the collection? Both. The villa was built for Pope Julius III in 1551-1553, and Ammannati's sunken nymphaeum is a major piece of garden architecture in its own right.

Who designed Villa Giulia? Vignola designed the main building and Ammannati the nymphaeum and garden structures. Michelangelo supplied a project for the casino that was not executed, and Vasari claimed the entire conception. The sources do not resolve it, and neither does this page.

What is the Sarcophagus of the Spouses? A nearly life-size terracotta sarcophagus showing a couple reclining together, which the museum dates to 530-520 BCE and gives as found at Cerveteri. Wikipedia dates it 530-510.

How much is it? EUR 13 full, EUR 2 reduced.

Is it closed on Mondays? Yes.