Crypta Balbi

Museums The Crypta Balbi Museum is the only one of its kind, occupying a city block that includes an archaeological excavation site, the ruins of an imperial building, and a museum that contains a great number of artefacts and helps you understand how the city changed since the imperial age until today. Together with Palazzo Massimo, Palazzo Altemps and the Baths of Diocletian, it is part of the National Roman Museum. Originally it was a huge courtyard annexed to the theatre built by Lucio Cornelio Balbo, an important man, close to the emperor Augustus, in the early first century A.D. Now the Crypta Balbi site shows us how  Roman society and the urban landscape evolved from antiquity until modern times thanks to its well preserved archaeological layers. Twenty years of excavation and research have revealed a series of transformations and diverse uses of the structure. Above all, these excavations have shed light on our rather obscure knowledge of the passage from Roman to medieval society, the so-called Dark Ages. The museum itself is located between the streets called “Botteghe Oscure” and “M. Caetani”, that refer to the workshops and families that were protagonists in this neighborhood during the Middle Ages. The museum is divided in three floors  and includes artefacts recovered from the excavation onsite, such as ceramic objects, tools and even ruins, as well as items from the National Roman Museum. It is also possible to visit the excavation site under the museum where one can see the imperial ruins of the crypt and an ancient granary with medieval restructurings.