Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica – Rome

The Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, founded in 1984, are a single museum institution divided into the two locations of Palazzo Barberini, designed for Pope Urban VIII by Carlo Maderno at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Palazzo Corsini, pre-existing building redesigned by architect Ferdinando Fuga at the behest of Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini.

The two palaces preserve respectively the collections of the two families from which they take their name; however, the original Barberini collection, due to the disagreements between the heirs of the family, has been almost entirely dispersed. On the contrary, thanks to the donation of the entire collection by Tommaso Corsini in 1883 to the State, which had acquired the palace, the Corsini Gallery is the only eighteenth-century Roman painting to be almost unchanged today.

The collections are however rich in masterpieces of the greatest Italian masters, representative of the main painting schools from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century; some works of the collections are also in storage outside, or on permanent loan for reasons of representation to institutions such as ministries, State offices and embassies.