The termal power station dedicated to the alderman Giovanni Montemartini was inaugurated on 1912, along Via Ostiense, in a neighborhood that was under a systematic industrialization.
That area showed huge benefits for the establishment of factories and mills: It was located near the Tiber and was free from any taxes on fuel, as well as being easily accessible by train.
The technical and financial project of the first private plant, designed to produce electricity in Rome, involved the use of steam engines and boilers, later replaced by diesel machinery supplied by the firm Tosi, a special characteristic of the museum.
In 1997, during the restructuration of many museal structures of the Capitoline Museums, the Centrale Montemartini has been superbly transformed from example of industrial architecture, to a functional museum, with the transfer of hundreds of of sculptures.
Into the museum we will find a huge number of artifacts, which were found during the archaeological excavations in Rome between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century, the most prolific season of the roman archeology. These kind of discoveries has been very important to improve the topographic knowledge of the Ancient Rome. The exhibition at the Centrale Montemartini museum rebuilds many monumental complexes, retracing the development of Rome from the Late Roman Period to the Late Imperial Age.
The main works include:
– the pediment statues of the temple of Apollo Sosiano, original Greek of the fifth century BC
– the affresco with military scenes from the tomb of the Fabii, from the Esquiline, dated back on the first half of the third century BC
– the “Togatus Barberini”, from the last decade of the first century BC
– the portrait of Celopatra of the first century BC
– the statue of Agrippina the Younger as an Orante, in basanite, of the first century AD
– the great mosaic with hunting scenes by Licinian, form the fourth century AD
