The creation of the Capitoline Museums has been traced back to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of bronze statues of great symbolic value to the People of Rome.
The collections are closely linked to the city of Rome, and most of the exhibits come from the city itself.
The overall layout of the collection was altered in the second half of the XVI century, when the museum acquired an important group of sculptures following Pope Pius V's decision to rid the Vatican of "pagan" images: notable works of art increased the collections thereby adding an aesthetic dimension to their hitherto generally historical nature.
As part of the overall reconstruction work on the Capitoline Museums, archaeological excavations in the Roman Garden (inside the Palazzo dei Conservatori) began in October 1998.
They aimed to find evidence of ancient ruins before the area was transformed into a covered exhibition space.
The digs brought to light a few of the impressive foundation walls in tailing blocks from the Capitoline temple of Jupiter, partially uncovered in earlier excavations, and this made it possible to clarify some of the details of the temple's construction.
The rooms currently closed to the public and located below the Caffarelli terrace were part of the Mussolini Museum's setting, arranged according to strictly scientific criteria in ten rooms, and inaugurated in 1925, as the epigraph, displayed alongside the Caffarelli palace which limits the homonymous Belvedere, still reminds of.