NATIONAL ETRUSCAN MUSEUM VILLA GIULIA

Description

Essentials about the National Etruscan Museum Villa Giulia in brief

For those interested in history and culture, a visit to the National Etruscan Museum is recommended. In the museum you can see antiquities from Lazio, Etruria and Umbria, which can be attributed to the Etruscan culture. The National Etruscan Museum is housed in Villa Giulia, a former papal summer residence in the north of Rome, near the famous Villa Borghese.

The Villa Giulia building

Pope Julius III had a magnificent summer residence built on the site in the mid-16th century, where he spent a lot of time. At that time, the site was still at the gates of the city, at the transition from the urban to the rural world. The Pope invested large sums of money in the decoration of the villa, which is one of the best examples of Mannerist architecture. The urban front of the building has an ocher yellow two-story facade. The decor shows Rustica elements on the first floor and more delicate forms on the upper floor. In the center of the facade there is a richly detailed archway, which continues in its structure on the upper floor, with two window axes to the right and left of each.

Other buildings on the grounds of Villa Giulia

At the rear of the building there is a large semicircular loggia overlooking the first of three courtyards, with access to the garden and the central courtyard. There, two marble staircases lead to the heart of the complex, a nymphaeum. Here, in the summer, meals could be taken outside. The structure of covered loggias on three levels, decorated with marble statues and balustrades, extends around a central fountain, in whose cool and shady environment, sheltered from the summer heat, one could spend the day.

The Casino della Vigna (“little house in the vineyard”), as it used to be called, and its gardens were set in the middle of the vineyards. The participants in the papal celebrations could embark at the gates of the Vatican, they were transported up the Tiber to the private dock of the villa, walks in the garden and meals in the Nymphaeum followed.

The National Etruscan Museum

Since the beginning of the 20th century Villa Giulia has housed the National Museum of Etruscan Art. The museum had been founded in 1889 with the aim of collecting the Roman antiquities from Lazio, southern Etruria and Umbria, as far as they can be attributed to the Etruscan culture.