Museo di Roma in Trastevere

Rome, Italy

The Museum of Rome in Trastevere is situated in Piazza Sant’Egidio, in a historic building. The earliest part of the convent was founded in 1601 at the church of Saint Lorenzo on the Janiculum, which was later restored and dedicated to Saint Egidio, as a home for the religious order of Carmelite nuns. At the request of Vittoria Colonna, in 1628, Pope Urbano VIII gave the churches of Saints Crispino e Crispiniano to the nuns. The museum currently preserves, on the ground floor, the marble plaques of the University of the Shoe Makers, put in place in 1614.
The building became the property of the City of Rome in 1875 and from 1918 it housed the 'Ettore Marchiafava' an anti‐malarial sanatorium for children. Between 1969 and 1973 the building was restored by the architects Attilio Spaccarelli and Fabrizio Bruno, who adapted it to house the Museum of Folklore and the Roman dialect poets, presenting material about Roman popular traditions from the Museum of Rome, which was then, and remains, in the Palazzo Braschi. The Museum of Folklore and the Roman dialect poets opened to the public on the 1st of February 1979.
The Museum was recently restructured to better adapt to its current needs – which includes space for exhibitions, concerts, shows and conferences. It reopened in 2000 under the new name of the Museo di Roma in Trastevere. The permanent collection of the Museo di Roma in Trastevere shows the salient aspects of popular Roman life of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Aside from the permanent collection, the museum hosts a variety of exhibitions.