What's on in Rome

Palazzo Barberini - Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica

Vermeer's 'Woman in Blue Reading a Letter', on loan from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, comes to Palazzo Barberini for a focused display of the Dutch master's intimate light.

Palazzo delle Esposizioni

Major retrospective of Mario Schifano, one of postwar Italy's most influential artists, gathering over 100 works from the 1960s to the 1990s across monochromes, photography and TV-screen landscapes.

Palazzo delle Esposizioni

A 42-painting cycle by Marco Tirelli, a leading figure in the late-1970s renewal of Italian painting, conceived as an immersive installation exploring memory, cinema and literature.

Palazzo delle Esposizioni

A photographic and audio journey through Italy's transformative 1970s music decade, with around 700 unpublished images, vinyl covers and concert memorabilia spotlighting Rome's role in the era.

Galleria Lorcan O'Neill · Free

Solo exhibition by British artist Tracey Emin at Galleria Lorcan O'Neill's Rome gallery, on view from 30 April to 18 July 2026.

Capitoline Museums

A Palazzo Caffarelli show of more than seventy paintings, drawings and documents exploring Giorgio Vasari's career and his pivotal relationship with Rome.

Gagosian Rome · Free

Nearly fifty lifetime prints by Francesca Woodman, many never before exhibited, exploring her ties to Surrealism and her 1977-78 time in Rome through staged bodies in dilapidated interiors.

Galleria Continua Roma · Free

Solo show by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, pairing sculptural installations such as Contrapeso (Ciudad Plomada) with botanical drawings and mixed-media works in graphite, watercolour and digital print.

La Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM)

Retrospective of Bauhaus-trained painter Max Peiffer Watenphul (1896-1976) across five rooms and around 80 works, shown alongside pieces by Klee, Schlemmer, Dix and Jawlensky from his own collection.

La Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM)

Around 80 works survey Bauhaus-trained painter Max Peiffer Watenphul (1896-1976), whose colourful landscapes and still lifes chart a personal path through the 20th-century European avant-garde.

MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

An "ideal library" of over a thousand volumes traces eight decades of Italy's leading literary prize, framing it as a seismograph of the country's cultural and linguistic change.

MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

A single-channel video and spatial installation exposes the hidden labour behind AI, following Kurdish-Syrian refugees who classify images for AI training while facing automated drone warfare.

MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

The long-running women's video-art programme, with Nathalie Djurberg as guest "Goodmother", confronts fear across films, performances and animations spanning personal, social and political registers.

MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

An audio-room project built around poet Amelia Rosselli's own 1980s-90s recordings, turning her multilingual voice into an acoustic experience of writing that resists any single tradition.

MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

Three prize-winning artists born in the early 1990s counter digital perfection with glitches, failure and DIY tactics, probing human agency within automated and surveilled systems.

National Roman Museum - Palazzo Massimo

Three monumental Roman bronzes pulled from the Tiber in 1878, once decorating the ancient Ponte di Valentiniano: a diademed male head, a gilded toga-clad figure, and the wing of a winged Victory.

Castel Sant'Angelo - Museo Nazionale

Marking 150 years since Duilio Cambellotti's birth, this show reopens the castle's Cambellotti Rooms (decorated 1925-26) and gathers his textiles and decorative work where matter becomes form.

Chiostro del Bramante

A sweeping show on nature as a living, ever-changing universe, across three sections (Art and Ecology, Art and Science, Art and Politics), blending 17th-century works with contemporary and AI-generated art.

Museo Carlo Bilotti

Photography show drawn from Valerio De Paolis's collection, in three sections on the female form, the city and art itself, presenting international photographic masterpieces publicly for the first time.

Galleria Borghese

A major project with Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, built around Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and Pluto and Proserpina, tracing Ovid's myths through Titian, Rubens, Poussin, Rodin and Brancusi.

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts

Over 300 works by more than 130 artists trace the ironic, tragicomic sensibility running through Italian art and culture from the post-war period to the present day.

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts

A seventieth-anniversary retrospective of the acclaimed comic artist Andrea Pazienza, gathering his strips, sketches and archival material across chronologically arranged galleries.

Museo dell'Ara Pacis

A retrospective of over 200 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, tracing his pursuit of pure form across portraits, flowers, the body and dialogues with classical sculpture. Curated by Denis Curti.

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts

An illuminated rooftop installation whose lights flare in real time whenever lightning strikes somewhere across Italy, connecting art and visitors to the energy of nature.

Vatican Museums

Twentieth-century paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints from intellectual Leone Piccioni's collection, including Burri, Morandi and Guttuso, donated to the Vatican in 2024. In the Borgia Tower rooms.

Colosseum and Roman Forum

Over 300 artefacts from Italian museums alongside more than 220 works on loan from 19 Turkish museums trace the mythological and historical ties between Troy and Rome. The itinerary, introduced by a monumental replica of the Trojan Horse, connects the heritage of ancient Ilion with the myth of Aeneas and the founding of Rome.

Capitoline Museums

An exhibition in Palazzo dei Conservatori tracing the angelic figure across Western art from antiquity to today, through three sections: messengers, guardians and wanderers.

Fondazione Memmo · Free

Zimbabwean painter Portia Zvavahera's first institutional show in Italy: a site-specific installation and a new body of paintings made during a Rome residency, exploring memory, loss and transcendence.

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts

An 80-year survey of Italian architectural ideas, projects and visions, tracing eight decades of the Republic from the post-war years to contemporary practice and future scenarios.

MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

The Swiss artist's first major museum retrospective in Italy: 100+ works from the late 1970s on, anchored by the room installations Herumliegen and Familienraum, exploring the body, war and desire.

Centrale Montemartini

Archivio Luce multimedia show on Rome as a fashion capital, 1955-1975: 150 photographs, films, fabrics and 27 original garments by Valentino, Fendi, Forquet and the Fontana sisters.

Capitoline Museums

A retrospective at Villa Caffarelli of over 140 works showing how Diego Rivera and his contemporaries forged modern Mexican art from pre-Columbian heritage and post-revolution ideals.

Capitoline Museums

A 1:1, roughly 13-metre reconstruction of the 4th-century colossus of Emperor Constantine, displayed in the garden of Villa Caffarelli using casts of the surviving original fragments.

Museo dell'Ara Pacis

An immersive evening videomapping experience that restores the altar's original polychromy, animating its marble reliefs with light, music and multilingual narration on a roughly 45-minute route inside the monument.

La Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM)

Year-long focus on participatory artist Marinella Senatore as GNAMC's Artist of the Year 2026. A dedicated room presents over 40 drawings, collages and tapestries alongside talks, workshops and public events.

La Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM)

GNAMC's Artist of the Year turns the entrance hall into a year-long participatory lab, with 40+ works including four monumental 'Theatre of Commons' tapestries, drawings and a light sculpture.

Capitoline Museums

A Pinacoteca display using scientific imaging to reveal the creative process behind unfinished paintings by artists such as Palma il Vecchio, Guido Reni and Garofalo.

MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts

Barcelona and New York studio TAKK fills MAXXI's lobby with six mobile sculptural elements made of low-carbon and living materials, exploring new ways of coexistence.

Capitoline Museums

A long-running display in Palazzo Clementino of over 660 polychrome marbles from the Imperial age, from the Santarelli collection, illustrating Rome's history through coloured stone.