Crypta Balbi in Rome: the museum of medieval Rome, works, ticket and Saturday tours

The Crypta Balbi is one of the four sites of the National Roman Museum, on via delle Botteghe Oscure, between Largo Argentina and the Ghetto. It occupies the block built over the ancient Theatre of Balbus, inaugurated in 13 BC: the excavation and the museum tell a thousand years of transformations of a single city block, from antiquity to the Middle Ages and the modern era. It is the best place in Rome to understand how the city went from an imperial capital to a town of convents, gardens and small workshops. The site has been closed since January 2023 for excavation and restoration works; it reopened as an "open site" with free guided tours on Saturdays from 12 July 2025 (check the museum's website for the programme on the date of your stay). Allow about 1 hour 30 minutes for a guided visit.

Highlights

The courtyard and its stacked walls

Roman, medieval and modern masonry can be read vertically in the courtyard: you can see how each period reused the blocks of the previous one.

The ancient basement

Below street level, walls of stone blocks belong to the crypta, the covered portico that extended the Theatre of Balbus. Here the word "crypt" means, in Latin, a vaulted passage, not an underground chapel.

Medieval Rome

The museum's collection brings together ceramics, everyday objects, craftsmen's tools and architectural fragments found in the excavations of the block: they show a medieval Rome very different from the Rome of the emperors.

The convent and the conservatory

Above the Roman remains came first a monastery, then the conservatory of Santa Caterina della Rosa, whose buildings form the present museum.

Nearby

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