Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia

In Pope Julius III's villa on the northern edge of Rome, the walk leads downwards. Behind the main courtyard, curving stairs descend into a sunken nymphaeum, a cool court around a fountain fed by the Acqua Vergine, the ancient aqueduct that still supplies the Trevi Fountain. The pope built the villa between 1551 and 1553 as a summer retreat. The architect Vignola designed the house, the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati the nymphaeum, the painter Giorgio Vasari coordinated the work, and Michelangelo gave advice.

In 1889 the young Kingdom of Italy made this pleasure house a museum for the peoples who lived here before Rome. The archaeologist Felice Barnabei pushed for it, and the first rooms filled with finds from Falerii, chief town of the Faliscans, and Veii, Rome's Etruscan neighbour and rival.

Those digs still shape the visit. From Veii come the painted clay gods of a temple roof, the striding Apollo among them. From Cerveteri comes the Sarcophagus of the Spouses, a couple reclining together on a banqueting couch, modelled in terracotta in the late 6th century BC. Three gold sheets from Pyrgi, Cerveteri's port, record a temple's dedication in Etruscan and Phoenician. In 1919 Alfredo Castellani, last heir of a Roman goldsmith family, gave the State its collection of ancient vases and jewellery, and the museum has since spread into neighbouring Villa Poniatowski.

The newest arrival came in 2026. The State bought the wall paintings of the François Tomb, found at Vulci in 1857 and held by the Torlonia family and their heirs ever since, and on 30 June they entered the permanent collection, Achilles and the hero Macstarna still labelled with their Etruscan names.