Crypta Balbi site features

The Crypta Balbi is a city block cut open, and the museum is what the cut revealed. It stands between Piazza Venezia and Largo di Torre Argentina, behind a plain frontage on Via delle Botteghe Oscure, and nothing outside announces that the building is a cross-section of two millennia.

Underground, it is Roman. The lowest levels hold the remains of the theatre and the nearby Porticus Minucia Frumentaria, the great quadriportico intended for the free distributions of grain to the citizens of Rome — heavy masonry, low light, the walls of the Crypta itself, the portico attached to the small and refined theatre built by Lucius Cornelius Balbus in 13 BC.

Above that, it stops being ancient. The same vertical sequence carries the late-antique lime kiln, the fortified complexes and medieval houses of the merchants, and then the seventeenth-century dormitory of the Monastery of Santa Caterina — a long, plain, well-proportioned range of rooms which is where the museum rooms have been made. You walk through the convent to look at the Roman city.

The display is on three levels, and each is a different scale of question. The ground floor recounts the archaeology and history of the complex of Balbus and the nearby Porticus. The first floor is dedicated to the most recent archaeological investigations, which brought to light a complex of buildings built against the Crypta after the fire of 80 AD and definitively abandoned in the 7th century AD. The second floor illustrates the transformations from late antiquity to the Middle Ages.

And the objects are small. The social and cultural changes and the living conditions of the city and its inhabitants are narrated through the objects returned by the investigations or coming from other sites in the city — pottery, glass, coins, tools. There is no single masterpiece here, which is exactly the point.

At present you can see none of it. From 9 January 2023 the seat is closed to the public for the URBS project.

The Crypta itself

The 1st-century-BC portico attached to the small and refined theatre built by Lucius Cornelius Balbus in 13 BC, where the audience took recreation and refreshment during the intervals of the performances.

The Porticus Minucia Frumentaria

A great quadriportico intended for the free distributions of grain to the citizens of Rome, in the underground levels.

The late-antique lime kiln

Where the ancient city's stone was burnt for mortar — the clearest object lesson in how Rome consumed itself.

The medieval block

Fortified complexes and medieval houses of the merchants, built into and onto the Roman structures.

The convent dormitory

The seventeenth-century dormitory of the Monastery of Santa Caterina, in which the museum rooms have been made.

The ground floor

Recounts the archaeology and history of the complex of Balbus and the nearby Porticus.

The first floor

Dedicated to the most recent archaeological investigations, which brought to light a complex of buildings built against the Crypta after the fire of 80 AD and definitively abandoned in the 7th century AD.

The second floor

Illustrates the transformations from late antiquity to the Middle Ages, with studies of aspects of material and artistic culture, narrating the social and cultural changes and the living conditions of the city and its inhabitants through the objects returned by the investigations or coming from other sites in the city.