Vittoriano
Rome in Coin. Art and power in the history of the Eternal City is a major multi-venue exhibition project, which marks the very first collaboration among three major state museums to create a joint exhibition, retraces over two thousand years of Rome's history through coinage - one of the most powerful tools for political, economic, ideological, and cultural representation developed by the West.
As a means of exchange, an emblem of power, a vehicle for propaganda, an artistic object, and a medium of memory, the coin has for centuries accompanied the construction of Rome's identity and its image in the world. For this reason, the coins minted in the city offer a privileged vantage point on its political, religious, artistic, and social transformations. Through images, inscriptions, and symbols, each specimen retains the power to evoke an entire era.
The exhibition — curated by the Department for the valorization of cultural heritage, VIVE - Vittoriano e Palazzo Venezia, Parco archeologico del Colosseo and Museo Nazionale Romano — uses coins as interpretive keys to reconstruct crucial moments in Rome's history and culture, placing them in dialogue with works of ancient art, paintings, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, jewelry, contemporary installations and artifacts of material culture.
Three major State museums are collaborating for the first time to create a joint exhibition. The itinerary is divided into three chronological sections: antiquity at Museo Nazionale Romano, the Middle Ages at Parco archeologico del Colosseo and the modern and contemporary eras at VIVE.
The three exhibition sections can be visited either independently or as part of a single, unified itinerary. A combined ticket will allow the public to access all three sites and seamlessly journey through more than two millennia of the city's history
The itinerary is divided into twenty-five subsections - eight at Museo Nazionale Romano, eight at Parco archeologico del Colosseo, and nine at VIVE - each dedicated to a crucial episode in Rome's history and its corresponding cultural climate, including the election of Julius Caesar as dictator, the return of Pope Martin V from the Avignon papacy, and the breach of Porta Pia. Each subsection opens with a coin and links works of art, in-depth texts, and innovative digital tools, designed as visitor aids and interpretive guides.
The exhibition features over 160 works, from antiquity to the contemporary era: the ancient coins come from the Medagliere of Museo Nazionale Romano, which has recently reopened to the public and is currently undergoing a major digitization project funded by PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) funds; the contemporary coins come from the Museo della Zecca. The works of art have been loaned by major Italian state museums, Soprintendenza Capitolina, Musei Vaticani, numerous civic museums, archives, foundations, galleries, and private collectors.
Among the most significant works on display are, at Museo Nazionale Romano, the Honorary Missorium of Ardabur Aspar (Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale), the Portrait of Julius Caesar (Musei Vaticani), and the Portrait of Constantine (Rome, Sovrintendenza Capitolina); at Parco archeologico del Colosseo, the frescoes from Santa Maria in Via Lata depicting The Seven Sleepers (Rome, Crypta Balbi), the Madonna by Pietro di Belizo and Belluomo (Parma, Fondazione Magnani-Rocca), and the monumental Boniface VIII by Maestro Bandini from Siena (Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale), one of the most imposing sculptures of the Italian Middle Ages; at VIVE – Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, the Della Rovere Missal decorated by Jacopo Rivaldi, a masterpiece of fifteenth-century illumination (Turin, Archivio di Stato), the Portrait of Pope Alexander VII Chigi by Gianlorenzo Bernini (Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica), and Untitled by Maurizio Cattelan, which closes the narrative on the European present.
The exhibition is curated by Alfonsina Russo, Edith Gabrielli, Simone Quilici and Federica Rinaldi.
