National Gallery of Ancient Art at Palazzo Corsini

Tickets for the National Gallery of Ancient Art at Palazzo Corsini, with Barberini included

A ticket for the National Gallery of Ancient Art at Palazzo Corsini is also a ticket for Palazzo Barberini, the gallery’s other home. The €15 full ticket covers both palaces and stays valid for 20 days from when it’s first validated, so you can see the Corsini today and Barberini next week. Barberini gives you a set time, and here at the Corsini your entry is open, at the first time available on the day you turn up.

We don’t sell this ticket. It comes from CoopCulture, the galleries’ ticket office, on its website or at the desk in the palace. Outside the free days there’s no need to book, and one online order takes up to 9 people; for up to 10 people there’s also an advance-sale phone line, +39 06 3996 7500, every day from 9:00 to 18:00.

Besides under-18s, visitors with a disability and one companion go in free, and so do EU students and teachers of architecture, archaeology and art history, cultural heritage, education and fine arts, along with ICOM members, journalists with a press card and guides with their badge. For any reduced or free ticket, bring the proof, because the staff check it at the desk.

On the first Sunday of the month entry is free for everyone, and the same goes for 25 April, 2 June and 4 November. The museum recommends booking on those days without making it compulsory, and the next one is Sunday 6 December. A free ticket picked up at Barberini on one of those days only works at Barberini.

The Galleria Corsini on the Roma Pass: both palaces for one entry

The Roma Pass treats Palazzo Corsini and Palazzo Barberini as one site. Together they use up a single included entry, or you pay the €2 reduced ticket instead, and you choose which at the desk. One palace on the card’s first day and the other on a later one is fine, as long as the card is still valid.

Used here, that entry is worth the €15 full ticket, and the reduced price saves €13 on it. Age changes the sums: under-18s are free anyway, and EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay the same €2 with or without a card. For them a pass has to earn its keep at other sites, and our Roma Pass and Rome’s other city passes page lines those up.

The 72-hour Omnia Card gets in through that Roma Pass, for adults only, and the 24-hour Omnia has no Roma Pass in it. The Turbopass City Pass lists Palazzo Barberini and the Galleria Corsini on one ticket, collected at the Barberini. The Rome Tourist Card, the Vatican City Pass and Go City don’t include either palace, and no card covers the Orto Botanico behind the gallery, the Villa Farnesina next door or temporary exhibitions.

Galleria Corsini opening hours, with Monday afternoons until 28 December

Monday is the gallery’s weekly closing day, but this autumn it opens on Monday afternoons, from 12 October to 28 December 2026, under the name Monday at Corsini. The normal ticket is sold on those Mondays and still lasts 20 days for Barberini, and a paid Barberini ticket you already have works here too. Monday 7 December is a full day, from 10:00 to 19:00.

Tickets are sold until that last entry at 18:00. The entrance has no steps or barriers to get past, and bags stay in the cloakroom before you go into the rooms.

Caravaggio, Guido Reni and Fra Angelico in the Palazzo Corsini picture gallery

Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini put this collection together from the painters of the 1600s, and it still hangs in the apartments of the palace. The museum calls it the only 18th-century Roman picture gallery that is still almost unchanged. Start with Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist, a young man in a red cloak sitting beside his staff and a bowl.

The same saint comes back in Guido Reni’s Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist. Rubens is here with Saint Sebastian Tended by Angels, and around them hang paintings by Van Dyck, Murillo, Ribera, Poussin and Luca Giordano.

Fra Angelico’s Corsini Triptych stands apart from the 17th-century canvases around it, three panels showing the Ascension, the Last Judgement and Pentecost. The palace around them is older than the collection, and it had other residents first.

Palazzo Corsini, from Queen Christina’s home to Italy’s first national gallery

The palace began in 1511 as a residence of the Riario family, and Queen Christina of Sweden lived here after she gave up her throne. The Corsini, a family from Florence, came later: Lorenzo Corsini was elected pope in 1730, as Clement XII, and from 1736 the architect Ferdinando Fuga rebuilt the palace for them. The long facade on the garden side, in the photo at the top of this page, is his.

The paintings became public in 1883, when Prince Tommaso Corsini sold the palace to the Kingdom of Italy and gave it the whole collection with it. Ten years later, in 1893, Italy opened its first national gallery here. That’s where the name comes from, and “ancient art” in it means the old masters you’ve just seen, not Roman antiquities.

How to get to Palazzo Corsini in Trastevere, and the garden behind it

Palazzo Corsini stands on Via della Lungara in Trastevere, with the Villa Farnesina beside it, so if you’re already on that side of the river you’re close. No metro line comes near, so from the rest of the city the bus is easier.

The garden is open Monday to Saturday from 9:00 to 17:30, and a ticket for it alone is €8. It closes on Sundays, so if you want the €10 ticket that pairs it with the gallery, keep that visit for another day of the week.