Gregoriano Profano Museum

Look at how fragments are supported and separated. Large windows, skylights and open partitions give this collection a different setting from the eighteenth-century sculpture halls. The Passarelli architects designed a flexible display for antiquities with many different origins. The Gregoriano Profano Museum began in the Lateran Palace in 1844, under Pope Gregory XVI. Finds from excavations in Rome and nearby sites joined objects already held in storage. The collection moved to the Vatican in the twentieth century, and this building opened in 1970. Its subjects range from ancient Greek carving to Roman sculpture made for public buildings, houses and tombs. A Roman copy of a Greek statue carries a different history from a relief carved for a Roman monument. Notice the size of a fragment and what survives around its edges. A piece that now stands alone may once have belonged to a much larger structure. This collection is separate from the Profane Museum in the former Library galleries.