There are 29 exhibitions on in Rome worth the trip. I checked the dates, the venues and the opening hours one by one, on the museums’ own pages.
Last checked: 12 September 2026
5 June to 4 October 2026
Seventeen students from the RUFA photography course documented the rooms of Palazzo Corsini, and here is the result. It accompanies a volume published by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione. It closes on 4 October.
18 March to 4 October 2026
A photographic project by Francesco Conversano, curated by the Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli. It is at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, the municipal venue where photography gets more room than anywhere else, and it closes on 4 October.
23 May to 4 October 2026
The fine arts academies of Frosinone and Rome meet archaeology inside Porta San Sebastiano, which is where the Museo delle Mura lives. It closes on 4 October, and the museum states that it is not accessible.
29 May to 4 October 2026
Mapplethorpe’s photographs inside the glass box that houses the altar of Augustus. On paper the pairing jars, in the room it works: his polished black and white chases the same idea of the perfect body as the Roman relief.
3 April to 4 October 2026
The first chapter of «Scuola Italiana», Gianluca Marziani’s project on contemporary painting, is given to the Palermo painter Nicola Pucci and his magical realism. Extended by three months beyond its original closing date, it stays open until 4 October.
11 September to 11 October 2026
Saverio Ungheri at the Mattatoio, curated by Andrea Romoli Barberini. It runs exactly one month, from 11 September to 11 October, which makes it the shorter of the two shows open in the same Testaccio complex.
20 December 2025 to 11 October 2026
The municipal Gallery of Modern Art was born on 28 October 1925 in the rooms of Palazzo Caffarelli, on the Campidoglio: it has not always been in via Crispi. For its centenary it retraces its own history, and it closes on 11 October.
8 July to 11 October 2026
A single painting, and that is precisely why it is worth the trip: the Woman in Blue is on loan from the Rijksmuseum, one of only thirty four Vermeers in existence.
23 June to 11 October 2026
The Galleria Borghese rereads its own sculptures through Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the book Bernini had in mind while carving Apollo and Daphne. Setting text beside marble changes the way you look at the rooms.
24 April to 18 October 2026
Panels, sketches, letters and archive papers by an artist who told the story of Italy in the 1970s and 1980s better than many historians, with a line that is still astonishing decades on. He died at thirty two.
12 June to 18 October 2026
More than three hundred objects on the Trojan myth as Rome’s founding story, many of them lent by Turkey. It sits inside the Colosseum, so it comes with a ticket to the most visited monument in Italy.
22 July to 18 October 2026
More than seventy objects from the storerooms of Herculaneum, rarely shown: tableware, furniture, tools and a loaf of bread carbonised by the eruption of AD 79. Not great art, but daily life stopped in a single afternoon.
11 September to 25 October 2026
The Mattatoio in Testaccio is a nineteenth century slaughterhouse turned exhibition space, and Pavilion 9a holds Giuseppe Modica’s painting, curated by Giuseppe Appella. Entry is free, and it closes on 25 October.
10 July to 25 October 2026
The Galleria Nazionale restages the exhibition Karl Lagerfeld staged there in 1985 to mark twenty years of work with Fendi. An avowed remake, best read as an archive prised open again.
13 May to 1 November 2026
The ground floor rooms of Palazzo dei Conservatori gather angel figures from antiquity to the present. The museum presents it as an exhibition in memory of Pope Francis: messengers, guardians and wayfarers, as the subtitle has it.
19 September to 8 November 2026
It comes from Berlin and Brno with a new layout, and it is about the home and about living, from a feminist and political angle. It opens on 19 September at the Aranciera in Villa Borghese and closes on 8 November.
26 September to 15 November 2026
About forty works, between paintings, woodcuts, watercolours and large polyptychs: it is where Marina Bindella’s recent work stands. It opens on 26 September at the Aranciera in Villa Borghese and closes on 15 November.
4 July to 15 November 2026
The least told chapter of Roman Egypt: the oases of the western desert between the first century BC and the fifth AD. Finds from the Museo Nazionale Romano, some recovered by the Carabinieri art squad, are set against video art and digital reconstructions.
11 June to 15 November 2026
The first Italian museum retrospective devoted to Miriam Cahn, curated by Cristiana Perrella: over 130 paintings, drawings and pastels on the body, vulnerability and the violence of war. Painting that stares back at you, and not a restful visit.
26 June to 15 November 2026
One hundred and fifty photographs, film clips and original garments by Valentino, Fendi and the Fontana sisters, shown in the machine hall of a former power station. The clash between turbines and couture is the reason to go.
8 July to 22 November 2026
The Roman paintings of Kanutas Ruseckas, a nineteenth-century Lithuanian artist, shown in the Castellano apartment. Among his subjects is the Girandola, the firework display that for centuries lit up this very castle.
27 March to 29 November 2026
The emblem of the Italian Republic, the one with the star, was designed by Paolo Paschetto: this show tells its story, at the Casina delle Civette. It has been extended to 29 November, two months past the date many sites still give.
16 September to 6 December 2026
Fulco Pratesi founded WWF Italy, and he is also an architect, an illustrator and a journalist: here it is his watercolours you look at. It opens on 16 September at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere and runs to 6 December.
9 June to 13 December 2026
The widest survey of Mexican art seen in Europe in decades: over 140 works, with Frida Kahlo, Orozco and Siqueiros alongside Rivera. It is housed at Villa Caffarelli, so it pairs naturally with the Capitoline Museums.
1 July to 31 December 2026
Beside the thirty-seven painted panels of the François Tomb, on show at Villa Giulia since July, objects from its grave goods return on loan from the Louvre, the British Museum, Brussels and Lausanne. The show is included in the museum ticket, but must be booked.
15 January 2026 to 4 January 2027
Paintings left half done, shown in the Pinacoteca for what they reveal: the drawing underneath, the second thoughts, the solutions discarded. It is the longest running show on the Campidoglio, open until 4 January 2027, so there is no rush.
24 September 2026 to 31 January 2027
The first major exhibition in an Italian museum devoted to the photographer Marialba Russo, with six bodies of her work from the 1970s. Mind the MACRO’s hours: Tuesday to Friday it opens only at noon, on Saturday and Sunday at ten.
15 September 2026 to 14 February 2027
Palazzo Bonaparte opens the Roman season with the father of abstraction, as the venue itself puts it. Friday to Sunday you can go in until nine in the evening, Monday to Thursday it closes at half past seven: the difference changes the kind of visit.
10 September 2026 to 28 March 2027
Fifty one works by Warhol, plus some sixty documents and twenty eight unpublished photographs that Dino Pedriali took of him in Italy in 1978. Free entry, out in the EUR district, and it stays open until 28 March 2027.
8 exhibitions that have not opened yet, but whose dates are already announced.
30 September 2026 to 28 February 2027
Elisa Montessori at the Casino dei Principi, from 30 September to 28 February. The title states the intention, a path taken over time, and five months of opening mean there is no need to chase it: you can wait for the right day.
6 October 2026 to 11 April 2027
More than a hundred and forty works from the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection, the largest collection in the world devoted to the artist, in a palace that usually tells the story of papal Rome. The ticket costs 17 euros and the museum is closed on Mondays.
9 October 2026 to 18 January 2027
Oil, as contemporary art looks at it, at Villa Medici. It opens on 9 October and closes on 18 January, and it is worth knowing beforehand that the fixed date ticket costs three euros less than the open one: twelve against fifteen.
9 October 2026 to 7 February 2027
The first major monographic exhibition ever devoted to Pontormo, with the Carmignano Visitation and loans from the Uffizi, the Louvre and the National Gallery. It opens on 9 October, and on 21 September tickets were not yet on sale: check before you go.
9 October 2026 to 31 January 2027
A hundred and ten prints from the series Richard Avedon shot between 1979 and 1984 for the Amon Carter Museum in Texas: miners, herdsmen, salesmen and drifters of the American West, portrayed against a white backdrop. It comes from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.
16 October 2026 to 7 February 2027
For the first time in Rome, an overview of Sophie Calle’s work, more than forty years of research between photography and storytelling. The MAXXI ticket costs 15 euros, one less if you buy it online, and the museum is closed on Mondays.
13 November 2026 to 28 February 2027
Gordon Matta-Clark cut through real buildings to make works of them, and the MAXXI shows how he turned urban space into an aesthetic and social experience. It opens on 13 November and runs to the end of February, on the museum’s ordinary ticket.
18 November 2026 to 4 April 2027
Marina Abramović’s historical works alongside the Transitory Objects, pieces the public uses rather than looks at. The show grows out of the one presented in Venice during the Biennale and comes to the Galleria Nazionale for the artist’s eightieth birthday.
It is always these 65, and I check them one by one. When a venue has nothing on I say so, with the date I checked: it is something you would otherwise have to look up museum by museum.
Dates and prices change, and this page may not reflect the latest updates: before you travel, always check the museum’s own page, linked under each exhibition, which is the most reliable source.