Museo dell’Ara Pacis

The Museo dell’Ara Pacis, designed by architect Richard Meier, showcases the Ara Pacis Augustae, an altar dedicated to the Roman goddess of Peace. Built between 13 and 9 B.C., the altar features detailed reliefs depicting the imperial family and allegorical scenes. The museum’s modern architecture contrasts with the ancient monument, providing a unique visitor experience. Located along the Tiber River, it offers insights into Rome’s Augustan period and its artistic achievements.

Planning your visit

The Ara Pacis is a marble altar commissioned by the Senate in 13 BC to mark Augustus's return from campaigns in Gaul and Spain, completed in 9 BC, and its reliefs are the defining images of Augustan propaganda: a procession of the imperial family carved with individual portrait heads, allegorical panels of abundance and peace, and dense acanthus scrollwork below. Fragments were dug up across centuries, and Mussolini had the altar reassembled in 1938 as part of his own appropriation of Roman imperial imagery.

Richard Meier's museum, opened in 2006, is the first new building in Rome's historic centre since the war and was fiercely contested — a white travertine, glass and steel box holding the altar in daylight beside the Tiber, next to the ruined mound of Augustus's mausoleum. Critics called it an alien intrusion; it has settled into the city since.

The altar is small enough to see properly in half an hour, and the reliefs reward close attention with a guide or audio guide, since the political programme is entirely in the details.

Bookable options include entrance tickets and combination formats pairing the museum with hop-on hop-off river boat rides on the Tiber. Current availability is shown below.