Rome’s vast artistic heritage and Baroque splendor make it one of the most visited destinations in the world. In the last century the city’s house museums increased in number and scope, including not only noble dwellings but also the homes that celebrated the finest artistic minds, both Italian and foreign, who lived and worked in the Eternal City. Here are five house museums that provide intriguing glimpses into the living and working styles of some of Rome’s most influential novelists, playwrights, poets, painters, and sculptors. 

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO. One of the early twentieth century’s most impactful painters, whose metaphysical paintings influenced a generation of French surrealists (Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali among them), as well as the writer Sylvia Plath and the iconic film director Michelangelo Antonioni, Giorgio di Chirico spent the last 30 years of his life in Rome. In his memoirs the artist said that he and his Russian-born wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far, chose their apartment near the Spanish steps based on the simple logic that since Rome was said to be the center of the world and the Piazza di Spagna was the center of Rome, what better place to be than at the “apex of centrality.”