Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia

The Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia is Italy's most important museum of Etruscan and pre-Roman art. It occupies the Villa Giulia, a Mannerist summer residence built in 1551-1553 for Pope Julius III by Giacomo Vignola, Bartolomeo Ammannati and Giorgio Vasari, with its celebrated semicircular nymphaeum on a slope north-west of Piazza del Popolo. Since 1889 the museum has displayed key works of Etruscan culture - above all the life-size terracotta Sarcophagus of the Spouses from Cerveteri (late 6th century BC), the Apollo of Veii, Etruscan goldsmiths' treasures, bucchero pottery and the Pyrgi inscribed tablets. The leafy Villa Borghese park lies right next door. Visitors find an unmatched concentration of Etruscan art set within one of Rome's most elegant Renaissance villas.