Ara Pacis Museum

The Ara Pacis Museum in Rome houses one of the most significant monuments of ancient Roman civilisation: the Altar of Augustan Peace, commissioned by the Roman Senate in 13 BC to honour the emperor Augustus following his military campaigns in Gaul and Hispania. The altar was reassembled and placed within its current purpose-built pavilion on the banks of the Tiber, a modernist structure designed by American architect Richard Meier and inaugurated in 2006, making it one of the few contemporary buildings to have been constructed in Rome's historic centre in decades.

Alongside the permanent display of the altar and its intricately carved marble friezes, the museum hosts temporary exhibitions that place ancient Rome in dialogue with later periods of art history. Currently on show is Impressionism and Beyond, an exhibition that brings together works spanning the movement that transformed European painting in the nineteenth century and the artistic developments that followed in its wake.