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Where to Find the Best Contemporary Art in Rome Right Now

From FOROF to Fondazione D’ARC, Rome’s contemporary art scene can be found in palazzi, breweries, slaughterhouses, foundations and ruins.

There are as many ways to experience Rome through art as there are layers of history compressed into its streets, with a different few-day journey available for every period that has traversed, or still unfolds within, the city's dense stratification of human time. If you're in Italy for the Venice Biennale and want to extend your contemporary research with a fast train ride to Rome, there are museums, galleries and a growing constellation of foundations keeping the Eternal City alive. Note: the best way to move around Rome is on foot, and by following this list more or less in order, you can get your steps in and indulge in a cacio e pepe and a glass of wine with considerably less guilt.

Observer's Guide to Rome's contemporary art spaces

Giuseppe Penone's 'Foglie di Pietra'

"Like Flowers We Fade" at Fondazione Memmo

Alicjia Kwade's "INFRASUPRA" at FOROF

Dahn Vo at Fondazione Nicola del Roscio

Francesca Goodman at Gagosian

Minh Lan Tran's "Choreodrome" at Fondazione Giuliani

Galleries ADA Project, Amanita and Andrea Festa

Tracey Emin's "There Is A Truth" at Galleria Lorcan O’Neill

Gabriele Silli at Fondazione D'ARC

Latita Weirsch's "Atlas Studio" at Istituto Svizzero

"The Large Glass" at MAXXI in Rome

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea | GNAMC

Miriam Cahn's “Ciò che mi guarda” at MACRO

Renzogallo's "Oltre le ceneri" at Mattatoio

Via del Velabro, 9, 00186

Nothing could be more fitting than making a contemporary art foundation in the very heart of ancient Rome your home base for your contemporary art journey. Rhinoceros is Alda Fendi's ambitious hybrid art, hospitality and exhibition complex in the Velabro neighborhood, at the archaeological heart of the city near the Arch of Janus and the Forum Boarium. A restoration project led by architect Jean Nouvel and completed in 2018, the complex occupies a group of historic buildings, including a 1900 palazzo, transformed into a luxury hotel and cultural complex with residences, exhibition spaces, rotating galleries, cafés and a rooftop restaurant. Fondazione Alda Fendi - Esperimenti was conceived from the outset not as a conventional private foundation or static collection display but as a platform where visual art, performance, architecture, cinema, literature and hospitality would collide. The building embodies that mission, preserving the rough, ruinous texture of the old popular palazzi while inserting Nouvel's sharp contemporary language of minimal elegance, with visible traces of the past. On the ground floor, Rhinoceros's main exhibition spaces host rotating exhibitions in collaboration with galleries worldwide. Currently on view is a presentation by A Gentil Carioca devoted to Brazilian painter Miguel Afa; coming next will be the first solo show in Italy for Brazilian artist Rodrigo Torres, conceived during a two-month residency between c.r.e.t.a. and Rhinoceros. It's a body of work born from the artist's encounter with Rome's cultural landscape, centering on matter, time and transformation as things return to the earth: minerals extracted from the ground are shaped into monumental forms, then fragmented and returned to their essence through the combined action of natural forces and human intervention.

Giuseppe Penone's 'Foglie di Pietra'

Largo Carlo Goldoni 00187

Where there is Fendi in Rome, contemporary art is never far behind. Located in Largo Goldoni, directly in front of Palazzo Fendi, Giuseppe Penone's permanent public sculpture distills the essence of the artist's philosophy: nature and culture are not opposites but systems that press into, hold and transform one another. Monumental but strangely airy, two bronze trees rise to support a block of white Carrara marble, turning the language of ruins, columns and archaeological fragments into something suspended by organic growth. The bronze trees evoke time, touch and vegetal memory, while the marble block summons Rome's classical and archaeological past. Inaugurated on May 22, 2017, as part of a cultural patronage project promoted by Fendi and conceived for this specific site in the heart of Rome's Tridente, the sculpture was linked to Fendi's 2017 Penone exhibition, "Matrice," at the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the house's Rome headquarters.

"Like Flowers We Fade" at Fondazione Memmo

Via della Fontanella di Borghese, 56/b, 00186

Through November 1, 2026

Founded in 1990 by Roberto Memmo, Fondazione Memmo began as a private foundation dedicated to bringing major historical art exhibitions to the public, often in collaboration with institutions such as the Getty, the British Museum, the Prado, the Louvre and the Met in New York. In its first two decades, it staged blockbuster exhibitions at Palazzo Ruspoli, drawing more than 3 million visitors and helping pioneer a more dynamic model for private cultural programming in Italy. Since 2012, the foundation has shifted toward contemporary art, focusing on international artists, Rome-based cultural exchange and new commissions, with recent solo exhibitions by Sara Vanderbeek, Sterling Ruby, Camille Henrot, Latifa Echakhch, Oscar Murillo, Amalia Pica, Sin Wai Kin and Wynnie Mynerva. For her Italian debut at Fondazione Memmo, Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera presents a new site-specific installation and a body of paintings developed during a residency in Rome. Marking a deeply personal phase in her practice, this new body of work emerges from a cathartic, poetic response to the passing of her mother, moving away from the more visceral narratives of bodies and femininity that define some of the artist's best-known paintings and channeling grief as a metaphor for rebirth and spiritual transformation. Dreams, memories and emotional........

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