Palazzo Barberini Skip-the-Line Tickets

Your experience

See Renaissance and Baroque art inside a palace designed by three defining architects of 17th-century Rome, with skip-the-line entry and a second gallery visit included.

Getting started

Head to Palazzo Barberini at Via delle Quattro Fontane, 13, and show your ticket at the entrance. Your pre-booked access lets you bypass the ticket-purchase line before proceeding through the museum’s entry formalities. Once inside, you are free to explore the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica independently and set your own pace through the palace.

What to expect

The palace and its architecture

Palazzo Barberini is part gallery, part Baroque showpiece. Commissioned by the Barberini family after Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, the building brought together the work of Carlo Maderno, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Francesco Borromini.

Features:

• Compare two very different approaches to Baroque architecture: Bernini’s monumental square staircase and Borromini’s oval helicoidal staircase.

• Walk through rooms that retain the scale and decoration of the Barberini family residence rather than feeling like a purpose-built modern museum.

• Look for the Barberini bees, the family emblem that appears repeatedly throughout the palace’s decoration.

The National Gallery of Ancient Art

The galleries take you through Italian and European art spanning several centuries, with the collection particularly strong in Renaissance and Baroque painting.

Features:

• See Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, where sharp light, movement, and expression turn the biblical scene into one of the collection’s most dramatic paintings.

• Find Raphael’s La Fornarina, the celebrated portrait traditionally associated with the artist’s lover and one of the palace’s best-known Renaissance works.

• Encounter paintings by artists including Hans Holbein, Filippo Lippi, and other major figures represented across the collection.

The Grand Hall

Architecture and painting meet most dramatically in the palace’s ceremonial Grand Hall, where Pietro da Cortona’s ceiling covers the room overhead.

Features:

• Look up at The Triumph of Divine Providence, painted across the ceiling between 1632 and 1639.

• Follow its illusionistic architecture, figures, clouds, and Barberini symbols as the painted space appears to extend beyond the actual ceiling.

• Take in the fresco in its original setting, where it formed part of the Barberini family’s carefully constructed display of papal power.

Galleria Corsini

Your ticket does not end when you leave Palazzo Barberini. It also includes one visit to Galleria Corsini, the second home of the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, within 20 days.

Features:

• Visit the gallery separately rather than fitting both museums into a single day.

• Explore works displayed inside the historic Palazzo Corsini in Trastevere.

• Use the extended ticket validity to see how two Roman aristocratic collections and palace settings differ from one another.