Museum Excavations
Research on the Barberini and Borghese antiques collections

Formed upon the impulse of Maffeo Barberini (later Pope Urbano VIII, 1623-1644) and later continued by Cardinals Francesco and Antonio, the Barberini collection was initially hosted in the Palace of the Via delle Quattro Fontane (Road of the Four Fountains) and subsequently divided around the major museums of Europe and the United States. The collection was particularly significant for the cultural panorama it provided of Baroque Rome. This was due not only to its articulated richness - in addition to marble and bronze Greek, Roman and Egyptian sculptures, the collection included mosaics, paintings, ivory, glass, jewels, coins and inscriptions - but also as it had been gathered with the skill of the crème de la crème of antique Roman culture: Cassiano del Pozzo, Giacomo Bellori and Leonardo Agostini.
The Borghese collection was formed between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th Century upon the will of Camillo, (who became Pope Paul V in 1605) and added to upon his death with the alternate fortunes of his successors until the 19th Century. The collection was mainly divided between the mansion in Campo Mario and a smaller building commissioned by Cardinal Scipione and constructed between 1613 and 1616 outside Porta Pinciana. This large and prestigious collection gathered 6th Century pieces (Ceoli, Della Porta, D'Este, etc.), as well as objects recovered in excavations carried out in strewn family properties and in Rome itself. One of the long-term objectives of research underway is to reconstruct the vicissitudes of the collections and to discover, where possible, how the antiques were displayed in the building and gardens and how they changed over the course of the years.