Capitoline Museums opening days and hours
Open every day, 09:30–19:30, with last admission at 18:30. The museum closes on two days a year and two only: 1 May and 25 December. It is open on 1 January, 11:00–20:00, whatever your guidebook says — a large number of third-party sites still print “closed 1 January” and they are wrong. On 24 and 31 December it runs a short day, 09:30–14:00.
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Check dates & availability →The 1 January correction, since it matters most
Check the museum’s own hours page and you will find 1 January listed as an opening, 11:00–20:00 — a later start and a later finish than the ordinary day. Check a couple of the big international ticket blogs and you will find the museum listed as closed on that date, alongside 1 May and 25 December. Both cannot be true, and the institution publishing its own calendar wins. This is the one page on this site I would most like people to read before New Year’s Day, because a museum that is open on the quietest morning of the Roman year is a gift and most visitors never find out.
The ordinary week
There is no weekly closing day. The Capitoline is open on Mondays, which puts it on Turismo Roma’s official list of Monday openings, and it is open on Sundays, which the Vatican Museums are not. Those two facts between them answer most of the calendar questions people ask about Rome. If Monday is your spare day, what is open in Rome on a Monday works through the rest of the city; if you are weighing the two big museums against each other, Capitoline or Vatican is the page.
The full calendar, as published
| Date | Hours | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Every ordinary day | 09:30–19:30 | Last admission 18:30 |
| 1 January | 11:00–20:00 | Open. Later start, later close |
| 24 December | 09:30–14:00 | Short day |
| 25 December | Closed | One of only two closures |
| 31 December | 09:30–14:00 | Short day |
| 1 May | Closed | The other closure |
| 15 August | Ordinary hours | Civic museums stay open at Ferragosto |
Ferragosto deserves a line of its own. Roma Capitale’s standing position is that the civic museums and archaeological areas open on 15 August with ordinary hours, which is the day the Vatican Museums are shut and half the neighbourhood restaurants have the shutters down. Treat it as the policy rather than a promise for a specific year, and check the notices page before you build a day around it.
Last admission is the number that catches people
18:30, an hour before the doors close. The terrace café at Palazzo Caffarelli runs 09:30–19:00 with its own last entry at 18:30, so it shuts half an hour ahead of the museum — if the plan was galleries then a drink with a view, you need to be inside earlier than the closing time suggests. How long you need does the arithmetic, and the café page covers the terrace.
The annexe keeps different hours entirely. Centrale Montemartini opens Tuesday to Sunday, 09:00–19:00, and is closed on Mondays — so a combined ticket used on a Monday gets you into one museum and not the other. See adding Centrale Montemartini.
Why you should still check the notices page
Because the published calendar is the easy part. What actually varies here is rooms and one-off events. During 2026 the Horti di Mecenate halls were closed for maintenance and the Pietro da Cortona room in the Pinacoteca was closed for works. On 8 May 2026 the whole museum closed early at 18:15, with the Galleria Lapidaria, the Tabularium and Palazzo Nuovo shutting at 15:00 for an institutional event. None of that appears in a normal hours table. The museum tells you outright to consult its notices page before planning a visit, and that is good advice regardless of which site you booked through.
Late openings
They happen, and they are worth catching. For the Notte dei Musei on 23 May 2026 the museum opened 20:00–02:00 with last admission at 01:00, live performances in the Esedra di Marco Aurelio and in Palazzo Nuovo, and three exhibitions on view. A run of Saturday evening openings has been staged in past years too. These are announced rather than scheduled, so they belong on your notices-page check rather than in your itinerary.
Once you have a date, the practical follow-ups are whether you need to book and how to get up the hill — the Cordonata is the shallow ramped staircase, not the steep flight of 124 steps beside it.
Frequently asked questions
What days are the Capitoline Museums open?
Every day, 09:30–19:30, with last admission at 18:30. The only closures are 1 May and 25 December. Mondays and Sundays are ordinary opening days — unlike the Galleria Borghese, which closes on Mondays, and the Vatican Museums, which close on Sundays.
Are the Capitoline Museums closed on 1 January?
No. The museum’s own hours page lists 1 January as open, 11:00–20:00. Several major guides still print that it is closed that day; that is out of date. It is one of the quietest mornings of the year to be up there.
What time is the last entry?
18:30, one hour before closing. The Terrazza Caffarelli café also stops admitting at 18:30 but closes at 19:00, half an hour ahead of the galleries. Plan backwards from 18:30 rather than 19:30.
Is the museum open on public holidays?
Mostly yes. It runs ordinary hours at Ferragosto on 15 August under Roma Capitale’s civic museum policy, opens late on 1 January, and runs short days on 24 and 31 December. Only 1 May and 25 December are full closures, and one-off early closures are announced on the notices page.