Napoleonic Museum of Rome

Piazza di Ponte Umberto I 1, 00186 Rome: the Napoleonic Museum of Rome occupies the main floor of Palazzo Primoli, at the foot of Ponte Umberto I, on the side of the Tiber that faces the Palace of Justice. You get there on foot from Piazza Navona in three minutes, or by the buses that run along Corso del Rinascimento and Via Zanardelli. The metro doesn't serve the area, so the quickest way remains getting off at the nearest surface stop and walking the last 500 meters. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, last entry at 17:15, closed weekly on Monday, closed annually on May 1 and December 25, reduced hours 10:00-14:00 on December 24 and 31. The official website lists the full ticket at €7.50 and the reduced at €6.00, with a €1.00 presale fee for buying online, audioguide at €4.00 in Italian, English and French. Free admission for residents of Roma Capitale and the Metropolitan City showing an ID, and for holders of the MIC card. Booking is not mandatory for the individual visitor, mandatory and free for groups of 5 to 25 people at the number 060608. The fare system of the civic museums was revised during 2026: it's best to check the updated amount on the museum's official website before showing up at the ticket office.

The museum is part of the system of Museums of Rome run by the Capitoline administration, and it's one of the few where the container is worth as much as the content: you enter a 19th-century aristocratic apartment that has remained intact, not a succession of neutral rooms.

What the Napoleonic Museum of Rome Is and Why It Exists

Let's clear up right away a misunderstanding I hear repeated at the door at least once a week: in here there is no Napoleon's hat, no sword of Austerlitz, no didactic exhibit on the Italian campaigns. The Napoleonic Museum of Rome is something else, and a rarer thing. It is the private memory of a family, lined up by its last male heir and given to the city. The roughly 15,000 works of art, furnishings, objects and memorabilia that the museum keeps today were not bought on the antiques market to illustrate a chapter of European history: they came here because they belonged to the Bonapartes, and the Bonapartes, through a series of marriages and exiles, became Roman.

The result is a museum that reads like a family novel. The official portraits of the emperor coexist with the household expense notebooks, the marble busts with the snuffboxes given to dignitaries, the great court canvases with the watercolors painted by two girls who were bored at Villa Paolina. Whoever is looking for military epic will be disappointed. Whoever wants to understand how the relatives of the most powerful man in Europe really lived once the party was over will find here material for two hours of slow reading.

Count Giuseppe Primoli, the Man Who Made the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

Giuseppe Primoli, born in 1851 and died in 1927, is the decisive figure. Son of Carlotta Bonaparte and Pietro Primoli, Count of Foglia, he was a great-grandson of Lucien Bonaparte on his mother's side and a Roman aristocrat on his father's. He spent childhood and youth mostly in Paris, in the years when his cousin Napoleon III sat on the throne of France, and this double cultural citizenship explains everything else: the French language used as a family language, the frequenting of Parisian literary salons, the taste of the collector who can tell the document from the relic.

Primoli was a refined bibliophile and a tireless go-between of French and Italian culture. He was also, as we'll see further on, one of the smartest amateur photographers of 19th-century Europe. His idea of a collection wasn't that of the trophy: he gathered portraits, letters, furniture, jewels and photographs so that together they would make up the continuous story of a kinship. It is this approach, more than any single piece, that is the real masterpiece of the museum.

Two Brothers, Two Private Museums, One Donation

The collection you visit today comes from the merger of two parallel collections. Giuseppe and his brother Luigi Primoli had put together, each on his own, a private museum dedicated to the maternal family: Luigi in his villino on Via Sallustiana, Giuseppe in the family palazzo on the Tiber. On Luigi's death, in 1925, Giuseppe opened negotiations with the Governorate of Rome to unite the two cores in a single public institution, housed in his own palazzo. The negotiation succeeded and the city accepted the bequest.

It's worth pausing a moment on this gesture. Primoli had no children and could have scattered everything at an auction, as tens of Roman houses did between the wars. He chose instead to hand his home and his memory to Rome, with the condition that they stay together. Anyone who has seen what happens to private collections when they are broken up understands the value of that decision.

October 28, 1927: The Birth of the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

The museum was inaugurated on October 28, 1927, a few months before the donor's death. In the years immediately after, the collection was enriched by purchases supported by the government of the time: in 1932 the album of drawings from the workshop of Luigi and Giuseppe Valadier came in, bought from the Roman antiquarian Alessandro Castagnari. In 1934 the room dedicated to the King of Rome was inaugurated, made possible by the purchase of the collection of memorabilia and autographs that belonged to Anton Prokesch-Osten. The jewels of Caroline Bonaparte also arrived in those years.

A firm judgment: the fact that the museum was born inside a house and not inside a purpose-built building is the reason it still works. The rooms have the proportions of an apartment because they were one, the windows look at the river because the house wanted them there, and the visitor walks on a floor that the owners walked on. No contemporary display manages to fabricate that feeling.

Palazzo Primoli, the House That Holds the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

The building dates to the 16th century and for two and a half centuries belongs to the Gottifredi. At the end of the 18th century it passes to the Filonardi. Between 1820 and 1828 it is bought by Count Luigi Primoli, father of Pietro and so grandfather of the founder of the museum: from that moment the palazzo is the Primolis' and stays so.

The Tiber, the Embankment Walls and the Bridge That Forced Everything to Be Redone

To understand the present look of the palazzo you have to remember what happened in Rome after 1870. The construction of the Tiber embankments, the famous muraglioni designed to stop the floods that periodically inundated the center, changed forever the relationship between the city and its river. Whole fronts of houses that went down to the water were demolished, the river ports disappeared, and where there had been lanes and landings the tree-lined lungotevere opened up. To this was added the opening of Ponte Umberto I, which connected Piazza Navona area with the new Prati district and with the Palace of Justice under construction.

Palazzo Primoli suddenly found itself in the front row on an urban space that hadn't existed before. The old facade, conceived for a context of lanes, had become incongruous. In 1901 Giuseppe Primoli decided on the radical remodeling.

Raffaele Ojetti and the Work Site of 1901-1911

The project was entrusted to the architect Raffaele Ojetti and the work dragged on until 1911. The previous facade was demolished and replaced by a loggia, the building was raised and a new monumental entrance opened on Via Zanardelli, the new street that connects the bridge to Corso del Rinascimento. It's from there that you enter the Primoli Foundation today. The museum entrance, instead, is the one on Piazza di Ponte Umberto I.

I'll say something unpopular among lovers of local color: that work site was not a desecration. Ojetti had to stitch a 16th-century palazzo onto a completely new urban backdrop, and the loggia solution is an intelligent answer, not a disguise. Whoever stands on the bridge and looks toward the center sees a building that holds its own against the enormous scale of the Palace of Justice on the other bank, and that's no small thing.

The 18th-Century Ceilings, the Friezes, the Lion and the Eagle

Inside, the palazzo keeps stratifications that the attentive visitor recognizes without needing captions. Some rooms still have the 18th-century painted-beam ceilings. The friezes that run along the walls of rooms VIII, IX and X date from the first decades of the 19th century, that is the years when the palazzo already belonged to the Primolis.

The detail not to miss concerns instead the friezes of the third and fifth rooms. There two emblems appear side by side: the rampant lion of the Primolis and the eagle of the Bonapartes. They are heraldically later than the marriage between Pietro Primoli and Carlotta Bonaparte, celebrated in 1848, and they serve to date the decoration with a precision no archival document would give as quickly. Looking up, in those two rooms, means reading a marriage contract written on the wall.

In room IX, then, the restoration brought to light a fresco decoration in neo-Gothic taste datable to the years 1830-40. It's a taste that has left few visible traces in Rome, and seeing it in a domestic setting, not in a representation hall, is an opportunity that rarely comes up.

The Bonapartes in Rome: Why a Corsican and French Family Left Its Memories Here

The most frequent question at the ticket office is always the same: what does Rome have to do with Napoleon. The answer lies in a series of exiles, marriages and land purchases that over two generations turned one branch of the imperial family into a house of the Roman aristocracy.

Lucien Bonaparte, the Inconvenient Brother

Lucien was the first to arrive. During the Directory and the Consulate he held leading posts: president of the Council of 500, then Minister of the Interior, then ambassador of France to Madrid. On 18 Brumaire, that is November 8, 1799, his intervention was decisive for the success of the coup that brought his brother to power.

Then relations with Napoleon soured, over political differences and over Lucien's marriage to Alexandrine de Bleschamp, which the emperor did not approve. In 1804 Lucien and his wife settled in Rome. They bought properties in Lazio, among them the castle of Musignano at Canino, and there they devoted themselves to archaeological digs: Lucien Bonaparte is one of the names that recur in the history of the discovery of the Etruscan necropolis of Vulci. A French prince fallen into disgrace who becomes a digger of Etruscan tombs in the Lazio Maremma is already in itself a story worth the ticket.

Charles Lucien, Zenaide and the Birth of the Roman Branch

Lucien's son, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, who lived between 1803 and 1857, married his cousin Zenaide, daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, born in 1801 and died in 1854. Their fathers were brothers of Napoleon I: the marriage rejoined two branches of the family and planted them definitively in Rome. Charles Lucien, incidentally, was also a naturalist of international standing, author of ornithological studies that ornithologists still cite.

From the marriages of the daughters of Charles Lucien and Zenaide to members of the Roman aristocracy is born what the museum calls the Roman branch of the Bonapartes. It's the passage that explains why the imperial relics ended up in a palazzo on the Tiber instead of in France.

Carlotta Bonaparte and the Primoli Marriage of 1848

Carlotta Bonaparte, born in 1832 and died in 1901, was the daughter of Charles Lucien and Zenaide. In 1848 she married Pietro Primoli, Count of Foglia, born in 1820 and died in 1883. From this marriage were born Giuseppe and Luigi Primoli, and with them the very idea of the museum. The eagle and the lion of the friezes celebrate precisely that union.

The Visit to the Napoleonic Museum of Rome, Room by Room

The official route counts 12 spaces numbered with Roman numerals. It's not a rigorous chronological order and this, the first time, throws you off: you go from the First Empire to the Second and then go back. The logic is that of the house, not that of the textbook. Here is what you find, space by space.

Rooms I and II: The First Empire

The first two rooms are separated by a marble balustrade but form a single space, dedicated to the decade 1804-1814. Official portraiture dominates here: large canvases depicting the members of the imperial family in lofty, conventional poses, exactly as the court wanted to be seen.

The piece that catches the eye at once is Napoleon on the Battlefield of Wagram by Joseph Chabord, dated 1810: the battle of July 1809 against the Austrians, painted close to the events. Beside it, two canvases by Robert Lefèvre, the trusted portraitist of the imperial court: Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte in Court Dress of 1813, which portrays Napoleon's mother, and The Empress Joséphine, datable to around 1805. Then there is Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi with Her Daughter Napoleona Elisa by François Gérard, of 1810-1811.

The part I recommend looking at more slowly is, however, the tiny one: waxes, enamel miniatures, cameos, snuffboxes. These are the private portraits, the ones that circulated among the family's hands. The snuffboxes and bonbonnières on display were not collector's items but court gifts, the cadeaux that Napoleon handed out to relatives and dignitaries. Worth noting are the gold snuffbox with the miniatures of Zenaide and Carlotta, by Daniele Saint with the miniatures attributed to Pierre Baraton, of 1809-1810, and the snuffbox known as the snuffbox of the three consuls by Pierre-André Montauban, of 1803. The room is completed by a pair of five-arm candelabra with bacchante and thyrsus by Pierre-Philippe Thomire, of 1805-1810, and a plate with still life and geometric ornaments from the Marc Schölcher factory, of around 1808.

Room III: The Second Empire and the Rome of Napoleon III

You pass suddenly to the years 1852-1870. The room is dedicated to the Second Empire, the regime of Napoleon III, which governed France with the motto L'Empire c'est la Paix and with a foreign policy that had direct consequences on the life of Rome: it was imperial France that maintained for two decades a military garrison in defense of the Papal State, and the withdrawal of that garrison in 1870 opened the way for the entry of the Italian army through Porta Pia. Whoever visits Rome and wonders why the temporal power of the popes lasted until that date finds here half the answer hanging on the walls.

The two official portraits are by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, the painter who defined the image of the European courts of the mid-19th century: The Emperor Napoleon III, datable to around 1852, and The Empress Eugénie, of 1853. A lot of the material concerns the Prince Imperial Napoleon Eugène, only child of the couple, and his premature end: the sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux The Prince Imperial Napoleon Eugène with His Dog Nero, of 1865, other busts by the same Carpeaux, a wax statuette by Emmanuel Frémiet depicting him in uniform, a photograph showing him as an officer in the English army and a watercolor by Orlando Norio documenting the funeral at Chislehurst, in England, where the imperial family lived in exile after 1870.

There are also miniature portraits of Queen Victoria and of Napoleon III, a small sword in gilded bronze and mother-of-pearl of 1830 offered to Napoleon Louis, bouquet holders and, a detail not to overlook, furniture from a Paris residence of Mathilde Bonaparte. That furniture is the bridge to the last room of the museum.

Room IV: The King of Rome

This is the room that tightens the throat of anyone who looks at it carefully. It is dedicated to the son of Napoleon and Marie Louise of Austria, born in 1811 with the title of King of Rome and destined never to reign over anything, least of all Rome. It was inaugurated in 1934, after the purchase of the collection of memorabilia and autographs that belonged to Anton Prokesch-Osten, the Austrian diplomat who was the young Bonaparte's friend and confidant in the Vienna years.

The character of the collection is that of intimate history, not political history. After 1815 the child grew up at the court of Vienna under a succession of tutors, while his mother governed the Duchy of Parma and Guastalla and lived her own life. He died at 21, on July 22, 1832, with the title of Duke of Reichstadt.

Among the pieces on display is a painting titled The King of Rome, of 1811-1812, attributed to Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. There are allegorical drawings by Bartolomeo Pinelli and by Prud'hon himself celebrating the birth of the heir: imperial propaganda at work, in real time. There is the watercolor depicting the centerpiece designed for the wedding of Napoleon and Marie Louise. And there is an object worth the visit on its own: the Jeu de l'Hombre, a card game with mother-of-pearl counters of Chinese manufacture, given to Napoleon at Saint Helena by Mountstuart Elphinstone. A pastime to fill the evenings of the last exile, ended up in a display case in Rome.

Room V: The Roman Republic of 1798-99

Here Napoleonic history and the history of Rome touch for the first time. The room documents the Roman Republic, and the story begins in 1796, when the French army invaded the papal Legations and forced Pius VI to sign the armistice of Bologna and then, in 1797, the peace of Tolentino: a treaty that provided for handing over to France works of art and codices of the Vatican Library. One of the prints on display, Departure of the Third Convoy of Italian Statues and Art Monuments for France, of 1797, by Joseph-Charles Marin and Jean Jérôme Baugean, documents precisely those shipments. It is the first great modern art plunder, celebrated by the very people who carried it out.

The rush of events has a date and a dead man: in December 1797 General Duphot was killed during an anti-French popular riot, and the Directory had the pretext to occupy the city militarily. On February 9, 1798 the French army entered from Piazza del Popolo, and on February 15 the Roman Republic was proclaimed. An intense propaganda activity followed, whose most conspicuous manifestation was the republican festivals, public ceremonies modeled on French revolutionary examples and celebrated in the forums and squares.

Better to read the captions of this room slowly, because it's the only point in the museum where the Bonapartes are not a family but an army, and the city that endures them is the same one you are walking in.

Room VI: Pauline Bonaparte, the Most Famous Room of the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

If the museum has a room that people look for, this is it. Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon and by marriage Princess Borghese, lived in Rome from 1816 to 1825 in a villa she had bought in 1816 and furnished in French taste: Villa Paolina, located between the Aurelian Walls, Via Piave and Via XX Settembre, since 1950 the seat of the French Embassy to the Holy See. The room reconstructs that Roman stay through the objects that belonged to her.

The most discussed piece is the plaster cast of the princess's breast, displayed together with a replica of the head taken from Antonio Canova's masterpiece, the Pauline Borghese as Venus Victorious that is at the Galleria Borghese. Careful how you tell the story of this object: that the cast exists and is on display is a fact. That it was executed personally by Canova as a preparatory study belongs instead to the anecdotal tradition around the statue, not to certain documentation. The anecdote should be told by saying it is an anecdote.

Next to it is the gold toilette made by Martin-Guillaume Biennais, the goldsmith who worked for the imperial court, and a portable mirror on which the monograms were replaced: a tiny detail that tells of a change of marital status better than 10 pages of biography. There is the notebook of household expenses, which is the most human document in the entire museum. And there is a mahogany dormeuse very similar to the sofa on which Canova laid his Venus.

The room is completed by two watercolors and a painting: A Drawing Room of Villa Paolina in Rome with Princess Zenaide, the Children and Her Sister Charlotte by Jodocus Sebastiaen van den Abeele, an artist from Ghent who lived between 1797 and 1855, Villa Paolina from the Porta Pia Side by Giovanni Riveruzzi, active in the second and third decades of the 19th century, datable to around 1828, and Pauline Bonaparte Borghese by François Joseph Kinson, of 1808.

Room VII: The Kingdom of Naples

The room tells the Neapolitan story of two of Napoleon's brothers. Joseph Bonaparte reigned over Naples from 1806 to 1808. When he was named king of Spain, the throne passed to his sister Caroline and her husband Joachim Murat. It's the most dramatic Italian chapter of the saga, and it ended with the shooting of Murat at Pizzo Calabro in 1815.

Among the pieces on display is Caroline Bonaparte Murat Queen of Naples in Civilian Dress by Giuseppe Cammarano, who lived between 1766 and 1850, painted in 1813: the title says it all, a queen having herself portrayed as a lady of good society just in the years when the throne begins to wobble. There is a vase with the portrait of Joachim Murat by Francesco De Caro, of 1808-1815. And there is a piece that enthusiasts of the applied arts come to see on purpose: the demi-parure by Antonio Aguatti, who died around 1846, made up of necklace, earrings and brooch, dated 1805-1815, in micromosaic and gold, with scenes of popular life. Roman micromosaic is one of the most extraordinary craft productions of the city and this parure is a first-quality example.

Room VIII: Napoleon

Here the layout changes register and becomes openly didactic: the room reconstructs through images the history and the legend of Napoleon, from youth to the apogee to the fall, following the evolution of the iconography. It's the right place to understand how much the image of the emperor was constructed, and how quickly it was overturned.

Three works fix the three times. Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul Crosses the Alps, a print of 1809 by Antonio Giberti and Giuseppe Longhi after the famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, is the rising hero. Napoleon Hands the Code of Laws to the Goddess Roma, a painting by Luigi Agricola, an artist who lived between about 1750 and 1851, datable to around 1811, is the legislator at the peak: the allegory is designed precisely for a Roman audience. Allegorical Scene with the Fall of Napoleon, an anonymous print of Italian circle of 1814, is the immediate, ferocious reaction of the day after. Three images, five years apart, a total reversal.

Overhead, a large chandelier probably of Russian make, datable to the years of the First Empire. Look up: it's one of the most beautiful furnishing pieces in the museum and almost nobody notices it.

Room IX: Zenaide and Carlotta

The room with the neo-Gothic fresco decoration of 1830-40 is dedicated to Zenaide and Carlotta, daughters of Joseph Bonaparte and Julie Clary. Both painted, and Carlotta reached notable results in watercolor. It's the room where the museum stops being an archive of power and becomes the portrait of a Romantic generation.

The major piece is Zenaide and Charlotte Bonaparte by Jacques-Louis David, of 1821: the official painter of the Revolution and the Empire, then an exile in Brussels, portrays the two sisters sitting close together, a letter in hand. Whoever has in mind only the David of the great celebratory machines should see this painting, which is a private, subdued work, and perhaps the most beautiful thing in the museum. Beside it, Charlotte Bonaparte by Léopold Robert, of 1830-1832, and a watercolor Self-Portrait by Carlotta Bonaparte herself, of 1834.

Both Napoleon Louis and Carlotta died young, and their stories fit fully into the restless climate of European Romanticism. The room lets you sense it without explaining it, and that's its best quality.

Room X: Lucien Bonaparte

A compact space, dominated by two canvases by François Xavier Fabre, a painter who lived between 1776 and 1837, both of 1808: Lucien Bonaparte and Alexandrine de Bleschamp. They are the portraits of the couple who in 1804 chose Rome and who, with that choice, made everything else possible. Fabre was a pupil of David who settled in Italy, and his portraiture has a dry hardness that fits well with the story of a man who fell into disgrace for not yielding on his marriage.

Room XI: Charles Lucien and Zenaide Bonaparte

It's the room of the Roman branch proper, the one born of the marriages of the daughters of Charles Lucien and Zenaide to members of the city's aristocracy. A large portrait of Carlotta Bonaparte dominates the space, eldest daughter of Lucien, painted by Jean Baptiste Wicar, an artist who lived between 1762 and 1834: Carlotta Bonaparte in the Dress of a Peasant of Canino, datable 1810-1815. The disguise as a peasant is a topos of aristocratic portraiture of the time, but here it has a special flavor, because Canino really was the family fief.

There is also a drawing by Charles de Chatillon, active between 1795 and about 1823, depicting Zenaide and Charles Lucien Bonaparte, dated 1823. But the two objects I recommend looking for are others. The first is a small bookcase with cardinal's coats of arms that belonged to Cardinal Louis Lucien, son of the couple: inside are volumes from the library that Napoleon had at Saint Helena. The second is Zenaide's worktable, placed in the center of the room, a multifunctional piece of furniture whose compartments hold tools for painting, drawing, embroidery and some parlor games. It's the object that best tells how a princess spent her days in the Rome of the Restoration.

Room XII: Giuseppe Primoli and Mathilde Bonaparte

The last room closes the circle and brings us back to the founder. Giuseppe Primoli is portrayed in a drawing by Jean Alexandre Coraboeuf, an artist who lived between 1870 and 1947, datable to around 1902. Beside him, the figure of Mathilde Bonaparte Demidoff, who in Paris kept on Rue de Courcelles a salon-atelier open to the major artists and writers of the time: Flaubert, Dumas, the Goncourt brothers, Maupassant. They called her Notre Dame des Arts, and the nickname was not ironic.

One wall of the room is devoted to the couple's friends and gathers their portraits. The furnishings, small armchairs and sofa, come from the green boudoir of Augusta Bonaparte at Palazzo Gabrielli, today Palazzo Taverna. Leaving here you understand that the museum is not a tribute to Napoleon: it is the collective self-portrait of a family that crossed 19th-century Europe and chose Rome as its last address.

The Three Sections of the Collection of the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

Beyond the numbering of the rooms, the collection reads in three blocks, and knowing them in advance helps with orientation.

The Napoleonic Period Proper

It's the core of the First Empire: large canvases and busts portraying the members of the imperial family, plus the small portraiture of waxes, miniatures, cameos and snuffboxes. Rooms I, II, IV, VII, VIII.

The Roman Period

It runs from the fall of Napoleon I to the rise of Napoleon III, and it's the section that interests Rome most: the Bonapartes in exile, the marriages with the local aristocracy, daily life between Canino, Villa Paolina and the palazzi of the center. Rooms V, VI, IX, X, XI.

The Second Empire

Paintings, sculptures, engravings, furniture and objects of the years 1852-1870, with the center of gravity in room III and a tail in room XII, where Mathilde Bonaparte acts as a hinge between the Paris court and the Roman salon of the Primolis.

The Watercolors, the Photographs and the Umbertine Rome of Giuseppe Primoli

We come to the part that, for a Roman, is worth as much as all the Bonapartes put together. Giuseppe Primoli was a photographer. Not a professional photographer, not a portraitist by trade: a highly cultured amateur who, in the years when photography was becoming portable, went out of the house with the camera and began to shoot his city as it changed its skin.

An Archive of Over 12,000 Plates

The photographic archive kept at the Primoli Foundation, in this same palazzo, is one of the most important private collections of 19th-century Italy. It includes over 12,000 glass negatives with silver bromide gelatin, 318 thematic mounts with about 5,200 mounted images, 866 film negatives, 263 albums with tintypes, six period photo albums with 746 images and over 11,000 inventory cards. In 1983 the Archival Superintendency for Lazio declared it of notable historical interest. The Foundation has completed the restoration and digitization and the collection can be consulted through the online digital archive.

The period of greatest activity falls between 1888 and 1894, and the last plates are datable to around 1905. Primoli described his photographic excitement, in May 1891, saying the camera trembled in his hand like the tail of a dog sniffing the passage of quail: a sentence that explains better than any treatise what instant photography was for those discovering it then.

What He Photographed, and Why It Matters for Rome

He photographed everything: the urban transformations of the capital that had just become one, street scenes caught on the fly in several Italian cities, public demonstrations, aristocratic salons, trips, portraits of friends and relatives. Two dates above all: in 1890 he shot Buffalo Bill's circus camped in Rome, and in 1891 May Day with its processions. In the archive there are portraits of Sarah Bernhardt and of Alexandre Dumas the younger, as well as views of Rome, Venice and other places.

This is the point: Primoli's photographs are one of the most reliable visual documents of Umbertine Rome, the Rome of the just-finished muraglioni, of the new neighborhoods climbing over the meadows, of seamstresses and carters. And the photographs are not on display in the museum rooms: they are in the archive, on the upper floor, and to see them you have to go through the Foundation. Many visitors leave the museum without knowing that above their heads is that heritage.

As for the watercolors, the museum keeps quite a few, and it's best to look at them the way you look at a travel notebook: the views of Villa Paolina, the interiors with the princesses and the children, Carlotta's self-portrait. In the 19th century watercolor was the medium through which women of rank kept the visual diary of their days. Here that diary is intact.

The Primoli Foundation and the Library on the Upper Floor

Above the museum, with entrance from Via Giuseppe Zanardelli 1, is the seat of the Primoli Foundation, created by the testamentary will of Giuseppe Primoli himself. It keeps the count's library, his archive of papers and letters and the photographic collection we have mentioned. It is a research institute, not a museum: you access it for study, not for a tourist visit.

The hours published by the Foundation for consulting the library and archives are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:30 to 13:30, Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 13:30 and from 14:00 to 17:00. In the summer period, between July 27 and August 31, access is by appointment by writing to the institutional address, and the seat stays closed to the public from August 10 to 21. The phone numbers are 06 68801136 and 06 68801827. The library catalog can be searched online through the National Library Service.

Professional advice: if you work on Rome between the 19th and 20th centuries, on French literature of the same period or on the history of photography, the Foundation is one of those places worth putting on the calendar. If instead you're on a tourist visit, knowing it exists is more than enough, but it's worth looking up when you pass under the doorway on Via Zanardelli.

The Mario Praz Museum, the Other Museum Inside Palazzo Primoli

In the same building is the Mario Praz Museum, a detached branch of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. It is the apartment where the great Anglicist, collector and writer lived from 1969 until his death in 1982, with all his furniture, his paintings, his objects in their place.

Whoever has read The House of Life understands at once what we're talking about: Praz had built his apartment as an autobiography made of things, and visiting it means entering that book. The visit takes place in capped groups and at fixed times, so it should be checked in advance on the website of the institute that runs it. The pairing is formidable: two house museums in the same palazzo, one 19th-century and dynastic, the other 20th-century and individual. If you have the morning free, do them one after the other. It's the smartest pairing you can build in this corner of Rome.

How Much the Napoleonic Museum of Rome Costs and How to Get In Free

Tickets and Presale

The official website lists a full ticket of €7.50 and a reduced one of €6.00. Online purchase goes through the ticketing platform of the Roma Capitale Museum System, with a presale fee of €1.00. You can also buy at the ticket office or by phoning 060608, active every day from 9:00 to 19:00. Tickets pre-purchased online, via call center or at the ticket office are neither refundable nor changeable: you buy when you're sure of the date. During some exhibitions the categories entitled to free admission may have to pay a very reduced ticket of €2.00. The audioguide costs €4.00 and is available in Italian, English and French, handed over sealed with disposable earphones.

Free Admission for Residents and the MIC Card

The point every Roman should know: admission is free for citizens residing in Rome and in the Metropolitan City of Rome, showing an ID. For those who aren't residents but are domiciled in the city, and for students of public and private universities, there is the MIC card: it costs €5.00, is valid for 12 months and opens the entire system of civic museums, including the exhibitions hosted in their venues. With just two visits you've already earned back the cost.

The Other Free Admissions and the Reductions

Admission is free for everyone on the first Sunday of each month. Also free are children under six, people with disabilities with a family member or companion, licensed tour guides of the European Union with a valid license and the tourist interpreters who accompany them, ICOM and ICOMOS members, school groups with their teachers, professors and students of the faculties of architecture, cultural heritage conservation, humanities with an archaeological or art-historical focus, of fine arts academies and of some scientific faculties of the European Union, holders of RomaPass 48 and 72 hours, journalists with professional documentation, citizens of Paris by virtue of the twinning between the two cities, and blood donors during the summer campaign between July 1 and October 15.

The reduced fare goes to non-residents between 6 and 25 years, to permanent teachers of state and municipal schools, to members of the Biblioteche di Roma with Bibliocard, to holders of an annual ATAC and Metrebus pass, to groups of at least 20 people. There is also a 50 percent reduction for non-residents every Wednesday in the last two hours of opening: whoever passes by here late on a Wednesday afternoon has the best moment to go in, because the museum is also emptier.

How to Visit the Napoleonic Museum of Rome: Duration, Route, Accessibility

How Long the Visit to the Napoleonic Museum of Rome Takes

40 minutes for a quick loop, an hour and a quarter for an honest visit, two full hours if you read the captions and linger on the miniatures. 12 spaces on a single floor, no internal staircase to tackle during the route, no structural line. It's the ideal format for filling the half day left after a more demanding visit elsewhere.

When to Go and When to Avoid It

The museum is rarely crowded, and this is its greatest competitive advantage in the center of Rome. The best slots remain the Tuesday morning opening and the late weekday afternoon. To avoid, if you're looking for calm: the first Sunday of the month, when free admission brings a flow well above average, and days of driving rain in high season, when the whole center looks for shelter indoors. The Ferragosto holiday weekend, on the contrary, is almost deserted here.

Accessibility and Services

The museum reports a stairlift for people with difficulty walking, located at Via Giuseppe Zanardelli 1, a few meters from the ticket office. Anyone with specific needs does well to phone 060608 before showing up, to arrange access. The route, once you've reached the main floor, unfolds all on the same level.

The Napoleonic Museum of Rome with Kids

It works better than you'd expect, as long as you set it up as a treasure hunt instead of a lesson. The objects to look for are there: the Chinese mother-of-pearl card game that came from Saint Helena, Zenaide's worktable with its compartments, the dog Nero sculpted by Carpeaux next to the little prince, the Russian chandelier of room VIII, the micromosaic jewels of room VII. Under six you get in free. An hour is the realistic ceiling before attention gives out.

What's Around the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

Ponte Umberto I and the Lungotevere

Leaving the museum, the first piece of advice is not to move away right away. Climb onto Ponte Umberto I and stop at mid-span: from there you see the Palace of Justice, the enormous building by Guglielmo Calderini built between 1889 and 1911 that Romans call the Palazzaccio, and turning around you see the bend of the river toward Castel Sant'Angelo. It's the same view that Primoli photographed as it was being born.

Piazza Navona Three Minutes Away

Crossing Via Zanardelli and slipping into one of the lanes you are in Piazza Navona in under four minutes. The square preserves the shape of Domitian's stadium because it is built inside it: the underground levels of the stadium, visitable from Via di Tor Sanguigna, at the northern corner, physically show the reason for that shape. On the south side of the square is the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi, and toward the north, a few steps away, Palazzo Altemps with the ancient sculpture of the National Roman Museum.

Churches and Museums Within a 10-Minute Radius

Five minutes away is San Luigi dei Francesi with the three Caravaggios of the Contarelli chapel, and the national church of the French in Rome is, for someone coming from a Napoleonic morning, the perfect thematic closing. A little further on you reach the Pantheon. In the opposite direction, toward Via della Lungara and the Janiculum, you leave the neighborhood. Staying instead in the rione Ponte and the rione Parione you find the Chiostro del Bramante, which hosts exhibitions and has one of the smartest cafés in the center, and the Barracco Museum in the Piccola Farnesina, another small civic museum that is almost always empty.

Ara Pacis, Mausoleum of Augustus and Piazza Augusto Imperatore Quadrant

Walking along the river to the north you reach in a quarter of an hour the Ara Pacis in Richard Meier's case and, behind it, the Mausoleum of Augustus, reopened after the long restoration. The chronological leap is violent, but the theme is the same: two emperors, two propaganda machines, 2,000 years apart. If you then want to complete the Napoleonic thread, 20 minutes on foot toward Via del Corso is Palazzo Bonaparte in Piazza Venezia, where Letizia Ramolino, Napoleon's mother, lived the last years of her life and from where she watched the street from the closed loggia that you can still see today from the corner.

A Half-Day Itinerary Around the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

This is what I always propose to those who have four hours and want a coherent route instead of a collection of selfies: opening at 10:00 at the Napoleonic Museum, an hour and a half. Mario Praz Museum in the same palazzo if you have booked the slot. Exit onto Piazza Navona and descent into the underground levels of Domitian's stadium. San Luigi dei Francesi for the Caravaggios, which are free. Quick lunch around Via del Governo Vecchio. Closing at the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi. Five very different places, no move longer than six minutes on foot, and at the end of the day you'll have understood how this piece of the city works.

A Curiosity About the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

The curiosity I save for the right moment of the visit concerns the card game on display in the room of the King of Rome. It's called Jeu de l'Hombre and it's a card game with mother-of-pearl counters of Chinese manufacture. It's not a court object, it doesn't come from an imperial manufactory, it has nothing celebratory about it. It was given to Napoleon at Saint Helena by Mountstuart Elphinstone.

Let's stop a second on this name, because this is where the curiosity becomes dizzying. The Elphinstones were a Scottish family deeply tied to the British Empire and to India. A Chinese game, bought within the British trade routes, given to the man who had fought that empire for 20 years, while he spent his last evenings on a rock in the South Atlantic under English guard. The geography of Napoleon's defeat is all contained in a box of mother-of-pearl.

There's a reason I insist on this piece. The museum is full of objects that tell of power: portraits in uniform, allegories with the Goddess Roma, gold snuffboxes handed out to dignitaries. The card game tells instead of empty time, which is the thing Napoleonic iconography never wanted to depict. A man who had rewritten the civil codes of half of Europe, reduced to dealing hands at a little table to get through the evening. The Napoleonic legend was built on Wagram and Austerlitz. The truth of the end is inside that box.

I add a note for those who like dates: the game is in the room inaugurated in 1934 thanks to the purchase of the Prokesch-Osten collection. Anton Prokesch-Osten was the Austrian diplomat who frequented the Duke of Reichstadt in the Vienna years. The museum, therefore, bought wholesale the memory of a friendship. It's not often you can say something like that about a display case.

Something Nobody Tells You About the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

That above the museum, in the same palazzo, there is a photographic archive with over 12,000 glass plates documenting Rome between 1888 and 1905, and that almost none of the museum's visitors know it.

The guides tell about the Bonapartes, the portraits, Pauline. Then you leave, return to the lungotevere and go elsewhere. Meanwhile, one floor up, the Primoli Foundation keeps the collection that Giuseppe Primoli built with his own hands: glass negatives with silver bromide gelatin, 318 thematic mounts with about 5,200 mounted images, 866 film negatives, 263 albums with tintypes, six period albums with 746 images. In 1983 the Archival Superintendency for Lazio declared that collection of notable historical interest. It has been restored, digitized and made searchable online.

The value, for anyone who works on Rome, is enormous. Primoli photographed without rhetoric: the street, the markets, the carriages, the processions, the work sites of the new neighborhoods. In 1890 he shot Buffalo Bill's circus camped in the city, and in 1891 May Day. These are images that don't have the ambition of art photography and for this very reason work as documents: they record Umbertine Rome while it was happening, without correcting it.

The practical consequence is simple. If the Rome of the late 19th century really interests you, the museum is only half the reason to come to this palazzo. The other half is on the upper floor, is consulted for study during the Foundation's hours and is accessible online through the digital archive. There are no tickets to buy or lines to wait in: you only need to know it exists. And that's exactly what nobody tells you at the entrance.

The Advice I Give You for Visiting the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

The main advice is to visit it backwards. The official route starts from the First Empire and closes with Giuseppe Primoli. Try going in and looking right away for room XII, the founder's, then come back. Everything changes. If you've already seen the face of the man who put these rooms together, every portrait and every snuffbox stops being a historical find and becomes the family heirloom of someone you know. The museum works as a story only if you know who is telling it.

The second piece of advice concerns timing. Wednesday afternoon, in the last two hours of opening, non-residents pay half and the rooms are practically empty. Anyone resident in Rome or in the Metropolitan City gets in free with ID on any day, and this radically changes how you use the place: it's no longer a visit to schedule, it's a 40-minute stop you can slot into any afternoon. Do it. A small museum seen three times yields more than a huge museum seen once.

Third: take the audioguide only if you're alone and in silence. It costs €4.00 and is well made, but in this museum the real explanatory apparatus is the walls, the painted-beam ceilings and the friezes. Looking up is worth as much as looking at the display cases.

Fourth and last: pair it. On its own the Napoleonic Museum risks looking like an episode. Placed next to the Mario Praz Museum that occupies an apartment in the same building, or to Palazzo Altemps 200 meters away, it becomes a complete discourse on Roman private collecting. Two house museums in the same palazzo, one 19th-century and dynastic, the other 20th-century and solitary, are an opportunity that doesn't repeat in Rome.

Another Well-Known Fact, Yet Rarely Cited

That the palazzo you're visiting has the face it has because of a flood. Or rather: because of centuries of floods and the decision, taken after 1870, to shut them out once and for all.

Many people know that the Tiber's muraglioni are 19th century. Far fewer connect that work site to the houses on top of it. Before the muraglioni, the river was inside the city: the houses went down to the water, there were landings, floating mills, vegetable gardens, stairs that led to the bank. The construction of the embankments cut away that urban front, raised the street level, created the lungotevere and left tens of historic buildings with their backs exposed, facing a space that hadn't been conceived for them.

Palazzo Primoli is one of these cases, and on top of that it also found itself at the foot of a new bridge, Ponte Umberto I, opened to connect the Historic Center with the Prati district and with the Palace of Justice under construction. In 1901 Giuseppe Primoli made the radical decision: to redo it. He entrusted the project to the architect Raffaele Ojetti, the work went on until 1911, the previous facade was demolished and replaced by a loggia, the building was raised and a new monumental entrance was opened on Via Zanardelli.

Here is the rarely cited fact, and it has a concrete consequence for the visitor: the part of the palazzo that faces the river is little more than a century old, while the inner core is 16th-century and the decorations are 18th and 19th century. You enter a 16th-century building through a 20th-century facade. Whoever visits the museum believing they are inside an intact Renaissance palazzo aims at the wrong target. Whoever understands the stratification takes home a lesson in urban history worth as much as the Bonapartes.

The Right Photo to Take at the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

Inside the rooms, the most effective photograph is not that of the paintings. Large canvases photograph badly, with the reflections of the windows on the river ruining everything, and in any case better reproductions than yours exist. The right photo is the one that holds together an object and the room that contains it: Zenaide's worktable in the center of room XI with the large portrait of Carlotta behind it, or Pauline's dormeuse framed at three-quarters with the window behind. That kind of image tells the museum for what it is, an apartment, and not for what it is not, a gallery.

The second photo to take is upward: the 18th-century painted-beam ceilings, the friezes of rooms VIII, IX and X, and above all the detail of the friezes of the third and fifth rooms, where the rampant lion of the Primolis and the eagle of the Bonapartes appear side by side. It's an image that explains itself and that no printed guide will give you.

The third, and for me the best, is shot outside. Go out, climb onto Ponte Umberto I and stop at mid-span looking toward the palazzo: you'll have Ojetti's loggia, the lungotevere, the bend of the river and, turning slightly, the bulk of the Palace of Justice. At sunset, with the low sun from the west, the facade takes on a warm light that holds up very well even for a phone shot.

A practical warning and a rule of good manners: before photographing inside, check the conditions given at the ticket office, because the rules on flash, tripods and filming change over time and during temporary exhibitions. Flash, in any case, in front of enamel miniatures, watercolors and textiles should never be used. These are materials that light wears down, and in a room this small you also do damage to the other visitors.

Some Important Events That Happened Here in History

The first event is the purchase of the palazzo itself: between 1820 and 1828 Count Luigi Primoli buys it from the Filonardi, who in turn had it from the Gottifredi, owners from the 16th century until the end of the 18th. It's the moment when a Roman family puts down roots in a building that two generations later will become a public museum.

The second is the marriage of 1848 between Pietro Primoli, Count of Foglia, and Carlotta Bonaparte. It isn't a sensational news event, it's an event of consequences: from that day the Bonaparte blood enters the Primoli house and with it, over the years, the objects, the portraits, the papers. The friezes with the lion and the eagle seen in the third and fifth rooms are the mural record of that pact.

The third is the work site of 1901-1911, with the demolition of the old facade, the construction of the loggia, the raising of the building and the opening of the new entrance on Via Zanardelli to a design by Raffaele Ojetti.

The fourth is 1925, the year of Luigi Primoli's death. It's the fact that sets everything off: Giuseppe opens negotiations with the Governorate of Rome to unite in a single institution the two Napoleonic collections the brothers had built separately, his in the palazzo and Luigi's in the villino on Via Sallustiana.

The fifth is October 28, 1927: the inauguration of the museum. Giuseppe Primoli dies the same year, having lived long enough to see his family's home open to the public.

The sixth and seventh are the two great expansions of the 1930s: in 1932 the purchase from the Roman antiquarian Alessandro Castagnari of the album of drawings from the workshop of Luigi and Giuseppe Valadier, and in 1934 the opening of the room dedicated to the King of Rome, made possible by the acquisition of the collection of memorabilia and autographs of Anton Prokesch-Osten. In those years the jewels of Caroline Bonaparte also come in.

The eighth is from 1983, and concerns the upper floor: the Archival Superintendency for Lazio declares the photographic archive of Giuseppe Primoli of notable historical interest. From there begins the long season of restoration and digitization that brought the collection online.

Who Has Passed Through the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

First the owners, because they were the first to live in these rooms. Luigi Primoli, who bought the palazzo. Pietro Primoli, Count of Foglia, and Carlotta Bonaparte, who brought the imperial name there. Their sons Giuseppe and Luigi, the two collectors. And Cardinal Louis Lucien Bonaparte, son of Charles Lucien and Zenaide, whose small bookcase with the cardinal's coats of arms is on display in room XI with volumes from the library Napoleon had at Saint Helena inside.

Then there is the Paris of Mathilde Bonaparte, which the museum documents in the last room. Her salon-atelier on Rue de Courcelles hosted Gustave Flaubert, Alexandre Dumas, the Goncourt brothers, Guy de Maupassant: she was called Notre Dame des Arts and the title was deserved. One wall of room XII is devoted precisely to the couple's friends and keeps their portraits, so the visitor has in front of them, in a handful of square meters, the list of one of the densest cultural networks of the Franco-Italian late 19th century.

The same network is found in the photographic archive kept on the upper floor, which includes among other things portraits of Sarah Bernhardt and of Alexandre Dumas the younger: Giuseppe Primoli photographed his friends, and his friends were those.

Finally, the 20th-century one. In the same palazzo, from 1969 until his death in 1982, lived Mario Praz, Anglicist, critic and one of the most original collectors of the century, author of The House of Life. His apartment is today the Mario Praz Museum, a branch of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and is visited in capped shifts. That two collectors of that caliber, 70 years apart, chose the same building to construct their autobiography made of objects is the most beautiful coincidence of Palazzo Primoli.

Quick Questions About the Napoleonic Museum of Rome

Where exactly is the Napoleonic Museum of Rome?

At Piazza di Ponte Umberto I 1, 00186 Rome, on the main floor of Palazzo Primoli, at the foot of Ponte Umberto I and a few minutes' walk from Piazza Navona.

What are the hours of the Napoleonic Museum of Rome?

Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:15. On December 24 and 31 the hours are reduced, from 10:00 to 14:00.

When is the Napoleonic Museum of Rome closed?

Every Monday, May 1 and December 25.

How much does the ticket to the Napoleonic Museum of Rome cost?

The official website lists €7.50 full and €6.00 reduced, with a €1.00 presale fee for online purchase. The fare system of the civic museums was revised in 2026: it's best to check the updated amount on the official website before the visit.

Do Rome residents get in free at the Napoleonic Museum of Rome?

Yes. Admission is free for citizens residing in Rome and in the Metropolitan City of Rome showing an ID.

What is the MIC card and is it worth it?

It's the card of the civic museums of Roma Capitale: it costs €5.00, lasts 12 months and gives unlimited access to the civic museum system. It is designed for those domiciled in the city and for university students. Two visits are enough for it to pay for itself.

Is admission free on the first Sunday of the month?

Yes, on the first Sunday of each month admission is free for everyone. It's also the day the museum is most crowded.

Do you need to book to visit the Napoleonic Museum of Rome?

Not for the individual visitor. For groups of 5 to 25 people, guide excluded, booking is mandatory and free and is made at the number 060608.

How long does the visit to the Napoleonic Museum of Rome take?

Between 40 minutes and two hours. An hour and a quarter is the average duration of a visit made with attention to the 12 spaces.

How many rooms does the Napoleonic Museum of Rome have?

12 spaces numbered in Roman numerals, all on the same floor, from the First Empire to the room dedicated to Giuseppe Primoli and Mathilde Bonaparte.

Is the cast of Pauline Borghese's breast really there?

In room VI a plaster cast of the princess's breast is displayed, together with a replica of the head taken from Canova's statue. The attribution of the cast to Canova's hand belongs to the anecdotal tradition, not to certain documentation.

Is the Napoleonic Museum of Rome wheelchair accessible?

The museum reports a stairlift for people with difficulty walking at Via Giuseppe Zanardelli 1, a few meters from the ticket office, and the internal route unfolds on a single floor. For specific needs it's best to phone 060608 before the visit.

Can you take photos inside the Napoleonic Museum of Rome?

The conditions on the use of cameras, flash and tripods must be checked at the ticket office, because they change also during exhibitions. Flash in front of miniatures, watercolors and textiles is to be avoided in any case.

Is there an audioguide?

Yes, it costs €4.00, is available in Italian, English and French and is handed over sealed with disposable earphones. It is bought at the ticket office.

Is the Napoleonic Museum of Rome suitable for children?

Yes, if set up as an object hunt: the Chinese card game from Saint Helena, Zenaide's worktable, the dog sculpted by Carpeaux, the Russian chandelier, the micromosaic jewels. Under six admission is free.

What is the best time to visit the Napoleonic Museum of Rome?

Tuesday at opening and late weekday afternoon. On Wednesday, in the last two hours, non-residents pay half and the rooms are almost empty.

What is the difference between the Napoleonic Museum of Rome and the Mario Praz Museum?

They are two distinct museums in the same palazzo. The first is the dynastic house museum of the Bonapartes-Primolis, run by the civic system. The second is the apartment where Mario Praz lived from 1969 to 1982, and it is a branch of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, visitable in capped shifts.

Can you visit the library of the Primoli Foundation?

The Foundation, with entrance from Via Giuseppe Zanardelli 1, is a research institute and is accessed for study. The published hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9:30-13:30, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-13:30 and 14:00-17:00, with appointment mandatory between July 27 and August 31 and closed to the public from August 10 to 21.

Are Giuseppe Primoli's photographs on display in the museum?

The photographic collection is kept in the archive at the Primoli Foundation, not in the museum rooms, and can be consulted for study and through the online digital archive.

How do you get to the Napoleonic Museum of Rome by public transport?

The metro doesn't serve the area. You use the surface lines that run along Corso del Rinascimento, Via Zanardelli and the lungotevere, or you arrive on foot from Piazza Navona in three or four minutes. For updated lines it's best to consult the city public transport service.

Is there a cloakroom or luggage storage?

The museum is small and public services are limited. Anyone traveling with bulky luggage would do well to phone 060608 before showing up.

Is the Napoleonic Museum of Rome worth the ticket for those not interested in Napoleon?

Yes, for two reasons: it's one of the very few 19th-century Roman aristocratic apartments that can be visited with furnishings and decorations in place, and it keeps portraits by David, Gérard, Winterhalter, Lefèvre and Carpeaux. Napoleonic history is the pretext, not the limit.

Which other museums can the Napoleonic Museum of Rome be paired with?

With the Mario Praz Museum in the same palazzo, with Palazzo Altemps 200 meters away, with the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi on the opposite side of Piazza Navona and with the Barracco Museum in the Piccola Farnesina.

How many works does the Napoleonic Museum of Rome keep?

About 15,000 works of art, furnishings, objects and memorabilia of the Bonaparte family, plus an archive of letters and documents and a library that can be consulted on request.

When was the Napoleonic Museum of Rome opened?

On October 28, 1927, with the donation to the city of the combined collections of the brothers Giuseppe and Luigi Primoli.

One last consideration remains. The Napoleonic Museum is the place to recommend to those who say they've already seen Rome. It has no lines, no rows of buses in front of the door, it doesn't appear in the rankings of the 10 unmissable things, and for this very reason it gives back something that elsewhere has been lost: the silence of an apartment, the sound of your own step on the floor, the feeling of having entered someone's home. If you have a free hour in the center and find yourself around Ponte Umberto I, go up. Then lean out of the window over the Tiber and try to imagine Giuseppe Primoli going down to the street with his camera to shoot the city that was changing under his eyes. That window is still there, and the river too.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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