The Centrale Montemartini is located along the Via Ostiense on the left bank of the Tiber in front of the former Mercati Generali and it is an extraordinary example of an industrial archeology building, first public plant for the production of electricity converted in a museum. It is in fact the second exhibition pole of the Capitoline Museums and houses a considerable part of the sculptures of classical antiquity that came to light during the excavations carried out in Rome between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century.
The exhibition reconstructs the ancient monumental complexes tracing the development of the city from the Republican age up to the late imperial one with significant episodes often almost unknown to the general public, as about the huge mosaic with hunting scenes from S. Bibiana.
The great rooms of the Centrale and in particular the Machine Room with its precious Art Nouveau furniture, preserve unaltered turbines, Diesel engines and the colossal steam boiler: the ancient marbles shine for their brilliance and refinement of carving in this fascinating and suggestive scenery and in this atmosphere which recalls on one side the monumental grandeur of ancient Rome and on the other a more recent past and the memory of one of the first Roman industrial environments.
