Centrale Montemartini

This guide to Centrale Montemartini in Rome starts with a practical problem: in 1997 the Capitoline Museums closed for renovation and curators needed somewhere to store four hundred ancient sculptures. It traces the building back to 1912, when it opened as Rome's first public power station, and follows the curators who staged a temporary exhibition pairing marble gods with the plant's turbines and diesel engines. Walk the Sala Macchine slowly and notice which pieces you look at first, the statues or the machinery around them.