Yesterday's post made me think of the many museums existing in famous cities, lots of which unfortunately get forgotten by hasty tourists and travellers...
One of these is the Oriental Art Museum in Rome, Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale .
Tourists visit Rome in millions, but obviously they want to see the Roman archeological sites , the many wonderful museums recording Roman history... Few of them ever notice this museum or bother to visit it.
When I went there with my children - it was July 2009 - , visitors were so few that the employee at the ticket office took note by hand of the tickets sold, writing the number in a notebook..I noticed that only 5 tickets had been sold before ours on that day, and about 20 people had visited the museum in the previous couple of days...
So a visit there could be a refreshing rest after the overcrowded "traditional" museums and usual places where tourists go. It's well worth a visit if you can spare a couple of hours from your Rome tour.
The funny -and sad- thing is that such museum could be a main attraction in a smaller city (just like, I'm sure, many of the lesser museums in Paris or London) , but being in Rome is condemned to be deserted by everybody except a few scholars and tourists who get there by chance...Like us, who got lost thanks to my excellent sense of direction and happened to end up in front of that museum, and decided to visit it.
The palace that houses the museum is beautiful, Palazzo Brancaccio , and the collection pieces are displayed in a traditional but effective way, in well lighted glass cabinets all around the big rooms.
I took many photos there as it was allowed (very unusually for an Italian museum!), but few of them are of good quality as they were made without flash nor tripod and my camera at the time didn't have any image stabilizer... Anyway this is a small selection of the photos I took.
One of these is the Oriental Art Museum in Rome, Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale .
Tourists visit Rome in millions, but obviously they want to see the Roman archeological sites , the many wonderful museums recording Roman history... Few of them ever notice this museum or bother to visit it.
When I went there with my children - it was July 2009 - , visitors were so few that the employee at the ticket office took note by hand of the tickets sold, writing the number in a notebook..I noticed that only 5 tickets had been sold before ours on that day, and about 20 people had visited the museum in the previous couple of days...
So a visit there could be a refreshing rest after the overcrowded "traditional" museums and usual places where tourists go. It's well worth a visit if you can spare a couple of hours from your Rome tour.
The funny -and sad- thing is that such museum could be a main attraction in a smaller city (just like, I'm sure, many of the lesser museums in Paris or London) , but being in Rome is condemned to be deserted by everybody except a few scholars and tourists who get there by chance...Like us, who got lost thanks to my excellent sense of direction and happened to end up in front of that museum, and decided to visit it.
The palace that houses the museum is beautiful, Palazzo Brancaccio , and the collection pieces are displayed in a traditional but effective way, in well lighted glass cabinets all around the big rooms.
I took many photos there as it was allowed (very unusually for an Italian museum!), but few of them are of good quality as they were made without flash nor tripod and my camera at the time didn't have any image stabilizer... Anyway this is a small selection of the photos I took.
Comments
It is true that travellers limit themselves to the big name museums and galleries and little "hand-written" ticket places get forgotten.
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