Palazzo Altemps

Just between Piazza Navona and the Tiber River, Palazzo Altemps is a beautiful late-15th-century palazzo. Now one of the branches of the National Roman Museum, it was originally built for Girolamo Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV (who was a keen practitioner of nepotism). The building changed hands a number of times throughout the centuries, before being gifted to the Italian State in 1982. It then underwent 15 years of restoration work, and was inaugurated as a museum in 1997.