Founded on the initiative of Pope Gregory XVI in 1839, the Gregorian Egyptian Museum occupies nine halls with a wide semicircle that opens onto a terrace in which various sculptures are located. The rooms, taken from the former apartments of Pius IV in the Belvedere Palace of Innocent VIII, were originally designed by the Barnabite father Luigi Ungarelli, an outstanding Egyptologist of the time and a student of Ippolito Rosellini. Various architectural elements and wall decorations in an exotic style have been preserved from this first layout, designed to recreate the atmosphere of the Nile surroundings. Many monuments were brought to Rome by order of the emperor. The last three halls are dedicated to the artifacts of the ancient Near East, which were added to the collection in the 1970s.

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