Rome is set to show off its ancient glory in a swathe of old and new museums centred on the Capitol Hill.
"It will be a new Louvre," said Mayor Walter Veltroni, announcing the plans.
The little-known but richly attractive Museum of Roman History - currently off the tourist map in the Mussolini-built suburb EUR - is to move into a municipal building on the edge of the Circus Maximus.
The museum's much-admired collection of artefacts and scale model of ancient Rome will be joined, Veltroni said, by "other prestigious pieces" like the fragments of the Forma Urbis Severiana, a marble plan of the city sculpted under Emperor Septimius Severus (146-211 AD).
Never-seen treasures from storehouses, such as the ancient jewels of the Crepereia Trifena collection, tomb adornments and ivory dolls, will be moved into the new showcase.
To complete its attractions, Veltroni said the site on Via dei Cerchi would also house a multimedia museum of ancient Rome, where visitors will be able to take cyberspace tours of the city that ruled the world.
The newly refurbished Capitol Museums - on the old and new hub of Rome, the Capitol Hill - will form the centre of the new web of exhibition spaces, Veltroni said.
On the other side of the Capitol from the Circus Maximus, in Trajan's Markets, the new Museum of the Imperial Forums will complete the art-lovers' mecca, he said.
This will be the first piece of the jigsaw to open, in October, he said.
The museum will house a wealth of artefacts found in recent digs in the forums, Rome Cultural Heritage Superintendent Eugenio La Rocca said.
There will be statues of Dacians conquered by Hadrian in 101-106 AD, a set of splendid pillars in human form, called caryatids, from the Forum of Augustus, as well as a series of medieval ceramics among the ruins.
"The total area of the sites and buildings will measure 61,000 square metres," Veltroni said, "compared to the 70,000 of the Louvre".
The new exhibition network will be called The Great Capitol, he said.
