The National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, in Rome, is today the most representative museum of the Etruscan civilization.

The Museum was born in 1889 on the initiative of Felice Barnabei (1842-1922), an Italian archaeologist and politician, with the desire to bring together all the objects discovered in the Roman province: Etruria close to Rome, the Agro Falisco and Capenate, the Sabina, southern Lazio, to which Umbria was added. In the following decades, with the excavation campaigns carried out in Veio and Cerveteri, the museum acquired an Etruscan character.

However, it also houses Greek finds of the highest level, merged into an area that was an extraordinary meeting point for different peoples between the eighth and fifth centuries BC. The National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia is located in the Villa built by Pope Julius III during the years of his pontificate between 1550 and 1555 which is a splendid example of a Renaissance villa.

The greatest artists of the time took part in the design and construction of the Villa, divided into a series of three courtyards that develop deep behind the "palace": Giorgio Vasari, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammannati . The decorative apparatus of the villa was enriched with frescoes, due to Pietro Venale da Imola, Taddeo Zuccari and Prospero Fontana.