Ex Antiquarium Comunale del Celio

The Sovrintendenza Capitolina records that the building was conceived from 1882 to house the finds from the excavations that followed the proclamation of Rome as capital, and designed by Costantino Sneider as a Museo Urbano e Magazzino Archeologico. The first six rooms of the Magazzino Archeologico were inaugurated in 1889 and a seventh in 1906. From 1925 Antonio Muñoz was given the enlargement, completed in 1929, which turned it into a museum of the minor arts while the major sculpture went to the Palazzo dei Conservatori. In 1938 Muñoz added three superimposed rooms on the east side, completed early in 1939; a few months later, work on building the metropolitana tunnel caused significant structural problems, leading on 5 December of that year to a closure that proved to be permanent.