21 aprile 2023 - 2776° Natale di Roma

Rome's 2776th birthday, Friday, 21st April, awaits you with a rich calendar of special appointments, exhibitions, meetings, guided tours, and shows in different city areas, a large collective celebration dedicated to an audience of all ages. And to admire the beauties of its collections, Rome gives you free admission to the civic museums and the archaeological area of ​​the Circus Maximus, including visits to current exhibitions.

The celebrations of 21st April will be opened by Mayor Roberto Gualtieri placing a laurel wreath at the Altare della Patria. A Mass that Cardinal Angelo De Donatis will celebrate in the Chapel of the Palazzo dei Conservatori will follow.

Furthermore, within the VRBS ROMA exhibition, the golden glass with the personification of the city of Rome, found during the excavations for the construction of the Metro C station at Porta Metronia, will be exhibited for the first time. The image, datable to around the 4th century, therefore in the middle of the imperial age, is reproduced on gold leaf and represents the Urbs, the city according to the widespread iconography with a helmet and a spear. It is a unicum, as no other glass finds decorated with this representation are currently attested. The exhibition, created by Roma Capitale, Department of Culture, Capitoline Superintendence in collaboration with the Special Superintendence of Rome Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape, will be an opportunity to be able to admire a find of great importance from the historical-artistic point of view, as well as having an evident symbolic value for the city. Precisely, for the high representative significance of this discovery, the image will be used as model of the traditional commemorative medal minted by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato on behalf of Roma Capitale on the occasion of the anniversary of the foundation of the city. The medal, in bronze and with a diameter of 50mm, will be presented during the celebration ceremony of the 2776th Christmas of Rome at 10.30 am in the Hall of Julius Caesar on the Campidoglio. On the reverse, it reproduces the image of Palazzo Senatorio on the Campidoglio.

Subsequently, the Fontana della dea Roma in Campidoglio will be returned to the city, among the most beautiful and representative of the capital, after the significant restoration work whose works were directed by the Capitoline Superintendency and made possible thanks to the patronage of the fashion house Laura Biagiotti with Intesa Sanpaolo. The restoration of the fountain, inserted in the facade of Palazzo Senatorio in Piazza del Campidoglio, at the base of the staircase leading to the council chamber, designed by Michelangelo, concerned the base and the Roman statue of the goddess Roma, the surfaces in travertine of the architectural façade and the marble ones of the tanks with the restoration of their waterproofing. The cobblestone flooring near the pool was also fixed and the water system overhauled, making the fountain drainage system functional again.

In the Roma Capitale Museum System, for the city's birthday, free access to both the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions.

In the rooms on the third floor of Palazzo Caffarelli at the Capitoline Museums, La Roma della Repubblica narrates the collections owned by the municipality conserved in the warehouses and museums of the Superintendence. Cursus honorum. Il governo di Roma prima di Cesare multimedia exhibition project is visible in the rooms on the ground floor of Palazzo dei Conservatori. It recalls the magistracies of the Republican age, the cornerstone of the political life of ancient Rome. In the Sala della Lupa and Fasti antichi of Palazzo dei Conservatori, with L’eredità di Cesare e la conquista del tempo, the story of Rome is told from its origins to the dawn of the imperial age. In Palazzo Clementino, you can admire the Colori degli antichi. Marmi Santarelli at the Capitoline Museums. It is a precious selection of over 660 polychrome marbles from the Imperial age, coming from the Capitoline collection and the Dino and Ernesta Santarelli Foundation.

The exhibition Colori dei Romani continues at the Centrale Montemartini, recently enriched with a further 16 works that have just been restored and never exhibited before, tell, through the colored texture of the marble tiles, fragments of the history of the city of Rome, also illustrating the original contexts of their discovery.

At the Casino dei Principi in Villa Torlonia, the Primarosa Cesarini Sforza exhibition traces the fifty years of the Roman artist's activity and illustrates the fundamental stages of her creative research between memory and the future.

The Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi, in the rooms on the ground floor, as part of QUOTIDIANA, the exhibition program of contemporary Italian art promoted by the Rome Quadriennale, presents PAESAGGIO, the exhibition by the twins Carlo and Fabio Ingrassia; for the PORTFOLIO section, it exhibits the work of the young artist Irene Fenara.

There are three current exhibitions at the Museum of Roma in Trastevere: ARMANDO TROVAJOLI. Una leggenda in musica. On the tenth anniversary of the death of the great musician, composer, and conductor, the rooms on the ground floor host a rich collection of documents, photos, videos, music, and personal objects, to retrace his entire career. La movida. Spagna 1980-1990 by photographer and artist Miguel Trillo. In over 60 photographs, the exhibition recounts the cultural movement known as La Movida and its social and political consequences. I Romanisti. Cenacoli e vita artistica da Trastevere al Tridente (1929 – 1940). In about 100 works, including paintings, sculptures, graphics, photographs, and documents, life and culture in Rome between the end of the 1920s and 1940 is outlined.

The Gallery of Modern Art of Rome hosts Pasolini Pittore. One hundred years after his birth, the exhibition focuses on the pictorial skills of Pier Paolo Pasolini in the context of the history of 20th-century art. In the graphics room, Visual Diary by Liana Miuccio reveals a visual journey in the form of a diary built through the artist's photos and videos in dialogue with the written word of Jhumpa Lahiri.

At the Carlo Bilotti Museum – Orangery of Villa Borghese, Pericle Fazzini, lo scultore del vento traces the entire creative life of the master through sculptures of various sizes (wood, bronze, and plaster), drawings and graphic works: from the first rehearsals from the 1930s and 1940s up to the original sketches of the Resurrezione in the Pier Luigi Nervi room in the Vatican.

Appointment at the Museum of the Walls for Bōchōtei. Vite all’ombra del muro. Enrico Graziani, the photographic exhibition focused on the consequences of the construction of massive tsunami protection walls, with an eye above all on the architectural and social impact and the inhabitants' daily life.

Discover the complete programme