The mission of the National Roman Museum is the acquisition, conservation, enhancement and enjoyment of a unique cultural heritage. This exceptional testimony of the past is promoted and developed by the National Roman Museum, projecting a sense of historical continuity into the future.
The National Roman Museum was established on 7 February 1889.
The creation of a 'Museum of Antiquities in the Capital of the Kingdom' was a need felt as soon as Rome became the capital of Italy in 1870. With the urban expansion aimed at adapting the city to its new role as capital, numerous works, often of exceptional artistic value, were found, thus confirming the need to create a museum in which to display and narrate the greatness of the past and celebrate the ambition of a country that was finally united.
The choice fell on the Baths of Diocletian and part of Michelangelo's cloister, which had already been used as a repository for archeological material found during the construction of the nearby Ministry of Finance. The Museum was also enriched with numerous other materials from existing collections, such as the Kircherian Museum, and from the acquisitions of sculptures and important collections belonging to noble Roman families, including the famous Ludovisi Collection. At the time of its establishment, the Museum had only a small part of the Terme rooms, occupied by the most varied institutions and activities, from the Margherita di Savoia Hospice for the poor blind, in the spaces that once belonged to the Charterhouse, to the famous Caffè Concerto Al Diocleziano in Aula V. The decision of the Executive Committee for the 1911 Commemorative Festivities in Rome to host the Great Archeological Exhibition in the Baths of Diocletian for the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy was an important opportunity to free up the entire complex and return it to its original dimension as an archeological monument.
A new chapter in the history of the Museum opened in the early 1980s. Thanks to the Special Law for the Antiquities of Rome of 1981, Palazzo Altemps, Palazzo Massimo and the entire block of the Crypta Balbi were acquired, while the Baths of Diocletian underwent major restoration work. The Museum was then reorganized into four sites, each with its own specificity: Palazzo Altemps, an aristocratic 16th-century residence, was dedicated to the historical collections and the story of collecting, while Palazzo Massimo displayed the masterpieces of Roman artistic production found in the city of Rome and its territory. The Baths of Diocletian, with its monumental spaces, housed the Museum of Written Communication of the Romans and the Museum of Protohistory of the Latin Peoples. Following systematic archeological research, the Crypta Balbi and its archeological area were set up. At the end of the 1990s, the Medagliere of the Museo Nazionale Romano, which had been set up at the end of the nineteenth century to collect numismatic material from the territory of Rome and Latium, was transferred to Palazzo Massimo. Today its collections include over half a million items. The organization in four locations was also maintained with the Ministerial Decree of 23 January 2016, which made the National Roman Museum one of the institutes of major national interest, endowed with special autonomy.