Castles · Tour

Livia's Painted Walls, the Boxer at Rest, and Baths for Three Thousand

Three hours, privately, through one of the great collections of ancient Roman art, with a guide who holds a doctorate in the subject. The guide meets you at the entrance of the Palazzo Massimo. Inside are the classical collections, taken one work at a time rather than swept past. The Boxer at Rest shows how ancient boxing was actually fought. The Discus Thrower is the image the Olympic games have been borrowing ever since. Then the painted rooms that belonged to the Empress Livia, the wife of Augustus, with the original decoration still on the walls. Whole rooms rather than fragments, which is rare enough that it changes what you can take from them. The second half is the Baths of Diocletian, named for the emperor, the largest public baths in ancient Rome and built to take up to 3,000 people at once. Part of the complex became the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, converted by Michelangelo, and the church still carries the shape of the bath hall underneath it.