The Giovanni Barracco Museum of Ancient Sculpture comprises a prestigious collection of ancient sculptures – Assyrian, Egyptian, Cypriot, Phoenician, Etruscan, Greco-Roman art – which Giovanni Barracco, a wealthy Calabrian gentleman, donated to the Municipality of Rome in 1904.
Baron Barracco had devoted his life to collecting artifacts, both by purchasing them on the antique market and by recovering them from excavations that, at the end of the nineteenth century, marked the urban transformations of the Capital City of Rome. To house the collection, a special neoclassical building was constructed, which was unfortunately destroyed during the widening works of Corso Vittorio. Only starting from 1948 was the collection reorganized in the “Farnesina ai Baullari,” a building erected in 1516 designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
Egyptian art is represented from the oldest dynasties (3000 BC) up to the Roman era.
From Mesopotamia come the precious Assyrian reliefs, wall decorations from the palaces of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh and Sennacherib in Nimrud, from the 7th and 6th centuries BC.
A rarity for Italian museums is the section dedicated to Cypriot art, which exhibits some finely crafted objects, such as the polychrome votive chariot and the head of Heracles from the 7th-6th centuries BC.
Greek art boasts numerous originals, including works that provide a comprehensive overview of the great artist Polykleitos (5th century BC) and his school.
Roman art is highlighted by the head of a youth from the Julia family, a refined example of private portraiture from the early Imperial period (1st century AD).
Finally, provincial art is present with three reliefs from Palmyra, a caravan city that reached its peak in the 2nd century AD. The route ends with the polychrome mosaic from the first Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, dated to the 12th century AD.
