[3]: 190  It was housed in the Pastificio Pantanella [it], a large former pasta factory in Piazza Bocca della Verità, overlooking the Circo Massimo in the via dei Cerchi, in the Ripa rione of the city.

The factory building also housed the Museo dell'Impero Romano, and was renamed "Palazzo dei Musei".

[1] The museum re-opened only in 1952, in a new political climate and in a new location at Palazzo Braschi, a Neoclassical palace near Piazza Navona, built in the early years of the nineteenth century by Luigi Braschi Onesti, which since 1949 had already housed the new Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna.

[6]: 209  Thanks to numerous bequests, donations and acquisitions – among them a collection of some 5000 drawings, engravings and old illustrated books belonging to Antonio Muñoz – the holdings of the museum now include many works of art, and it has become primarily an art museum.

Artists represented include Pompeo Batoni, Giuseppe Bottani, Ippolito Caffi, Antonio Canova, Giuseppe Ceracchi, Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, Lievin Cruyl, Felice Giani, Pietro Labruzzi, Francesco Mochi, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Bartolomeo Pinelli, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Joshua Reynolds and Nicola Salvi (designer of the Trevi Fountain).