Museo Pio Clementino

Welcome to the Museo Pio Clementino, the crown jewel of the Vatican’s classical antiquities collection. This museum is a temple to the art of ancient Greece and Rome, specifically designed in the late eighteenth century to house…

The spiritual and historical heart of the Pio Clementino is the Octagonal Courtyard, also known as the Cortile delle Statue. This open-air space was the very first dedicated area for the display of classical sculptures in the…

Standing in its own niche in the Octagonal Courtyard is perhaps the most influential sculpture in the history of art: the Laocoön and his Sons. This Hellenistic masterpiece, discovered in 1506 near the ruins of Nero's Golden…

In a neighboring niche, we encounter the Apollo Belvedere, a Roman copy of a fourth-century BC Greek bronze original. This statue represents the sun god Apollo just after he has shot an arrow at the serpent Python. …

Moving into the interior rooms, we find a piece that is perhaps even more beloved by artists than the complete statues: the Belvedere Torso. This fragmented first-century BC marble figure, likely representing the hero Ajax or…

In the Sala Rotonda, or Round Room, we encounter a different scale of Roman grandeur. The room itself is designed to mimic the Pantheon, with a massive domed ceiling and a central oculus that floods the space with light. …

Finally, we visit the Gallery of Statues, a thematic and chronological arrangement that showcases the evolution of classical art into the early Christian era. Among the many sculptures of gods and heroes, such as the Mattei…

As we conclude our tour of the Museo Pio Clementino, we must recognize that we have stood at the very wellspring of Western artistic tradition. The works we have seen—the Laocoön, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Belvedere Torso—are…