[1][2] The museum is located in the house and in the same rooms in which Goethe lived with his friend the German painter Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein during his stay in Rome from October 1786 until February 1787 when they travelled together to Naples and Goethe went on to Sicily, and again from June 1787 until April 1788.

[4] Other artists who lived in Rome and frequently visited Goethe here were painters Angelica Kauffman, her husband Antonio Zucchi and Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein as well as the writer Karl Philipp Moritz.

He continued to study the ancient and Renaissance art of Rome and tried his hand at draftsmanship, painting and sculpting.

The second exhibition, which is always a temporary exhibition, often refers to arguments and themes which connect somehow the Italian and German cultures or talks about artists like Max Beckmann, Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann, Andreu Alfaro, Günter Grass and Johann Gottfried Schadow and their experiences in Italy as well as their examinations of Goethe.

The Casa di Goethe, opened in 1997 and is administrated by the Association of Independent Cultural Institutes (AsKI) and directed by Ursula Bongaerts.