Palazzo Venezia

Palazzo Venezia stands on the Piazza Venezia at the symbolic centre of Rome, occupying one of the city's most historically charged addresses. Built in the fifteenth century and widely regarded as the first great Renaissance palace in Rome, it served variously as a papal residence, an Austro-Hungarian embassy, and, most notoriously, the headquarters from which Mussolini addressed crowds from its famous balcony. Today the building operates as a national museum under the Italian state, housing an exceptional permanent collection of medieval and Renaissance decorative arts, tapestries, ceramics, bronzes, and arms and armour gathered from across Italy.

Visitors can now access the museum through a reserved entrance, allowing them to move through the palace's grand halls and courtyard at their own pace without queuing alongside general admission crowds. The collection rewards close attention, and the building itself, with its thick stone walls and Renaissance loggia overlooking the piazza, is as much a part of the experience as any single object on display.