Venue & Travel info

The main Sapienza Campus, the “Città universitaria,” was designed by Architect Marcello Piacentini and inaugurated in 1935. It’s a true city within the city where educational activities are integrated with administrative and reception structures, library services and museums.

The main auditorioum, Aula Magna, is the institutionally most important space of the Sapienza university. The 900 square meter room is characterized by an apsidal tribune defined by a curved wall with the mural “L’Italia tra le Arti e le Scienze” (Italy between the arts and scince) by Mario Sironi, a leading exponent of the Italian painting of XX century. The work, realised in just over three months, represents an epic vision of history, with the personification of Fascist Italy amidst the symbolic images of the humanities and sciences. The scene, set in a timeless dimension, is composed of monumental figures arranged on the sides of Italy: Botany, Geology, Mineralogy, Geography, Painting, Architecture, Sculpture, Law and Literature. Figures that collectively allude to the richness and value of knowledge, against a rocky backdrop dominated by the imposing figure of Winged Victory. With the fall of Fascism, the painting was concealed with sheets of wallpaper glued and nailed to the pictorial surface. In 1950, the mural was almost entirely repainted in order to eliminate the fascist symbols and cancel the Sironian stylistic matrix of the work. After two years of work the painting was restaurated to show again the original colours and style of  the Sironi. The restaurated painting has been visible again since 2017.

Museum of Classical Art hosts over 1200 plaster casts of works of Greek sculpture (originals and copies from the Roman era) in show in museums and collections all over the world. Originally named “Plaster Museum”, it was founded by Emanuel Löwy, appointed as professor of Archeology and History at Sapienza in 1889, who worked to create a collection of casts of Greek sculptures originals and Roman copies, on the model of the university plaster cast galleries which in Europe – especially in Germany – had arisen as indispensable teaching and research tools. The collection of plasters was hosted in several buildings in Rome, to be moved around 1930 in the basement rooms of the building intended for the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, the same ones it still occupies.