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This statue of Rome’s first emperor once stood on Via Labicana. It shows Augustus wearing his toga draped over his head – a sign that, in AD 12, he added the title Pontifex Maximus (high priest) to the list of honours he assigned himself.

These frescoes (20–10 BC) depicting a lush garden came from the villa of Augustus’s wife, Livia. They were in the triclinium , a dining pavilion half-buried to keep it cool in summer.

The imperial Severi family must have been passionate about sports to have decorated a bedroom of their 3rd-century AD villa with these charioteers. They are dressed in the traditional colours of the Roman circus’s four factions.

This hauntingly beautiful figure of Niobid (daughter of Queen Niobe), reaching for the fatal arrow that killed her siblings, was sculpted around 440 BC for a Greek temple, and was later acquired by Julius Caesar.

A luxuriously frescoed villa, discovered in 1879, included this bedroom scene of the nymph nursing the wine god with additional scenes in the niches.

Few large Classical bronzes survive today, making this 2nd-century AD statue special beyond its obvious grace, skill and preserved decoration. You can still see the yellow eyes, red lips and a comb band in the grape-festooned hair.

This 2nd-century AD marble copy of the famous 450 BC Greek original by Myron is faithful to the point of imitating the original bronze’s imperfect dimensions.

This Trajan-era altar connects the foundation of Rome to the divine consorts Mars and Venus. Mars is shown as father to Rome’s legendary founder Romulus (see Romulus and Remus); Venus bears the hero Aeneas, who fled Troy for Rome and consequently founded the Iulia dynasty (Julius Caesar’s own, invented family tree).

Colourful marble inlays represent paganism’s dying grasp among prominent Roman families. The empire had converted to Christianity by AD 331 when consul Giunio Basso (pictured as a charioteer in one panel) commissioned the scenes for his meeting hall.

Italian coinage and currency is on display here, from the Roman Republic and Empire coins through to the medieval and Renaissance principalities, to the lira and the euro.