The new reinvigorates the ancient at Ara Pacis, Capitoline

I had only one priority for my Roman sightseeing: the Ara Pacis. In my early visits to Rome I had sought out this best-preserved monument from the Augustan age. I remember being impressed by its bulk and decorative detail, but distressed by its dingy condition, in an even dingier building, isolated on a traffic island between the Tiber and the mouldering lump of bricks and weeds that was once Augustus' tomb. Then it disappeared for ages, closed under a canopy of scaffolding with a nebulous promise of restoration and a new museum. Someday. Maybe.

Ironically, that new museum opened just a few months after my last trip to Rome. So though the sparkling restoration within its light-filled building is heading for its 10-year anniversary, it was all new to me. And fantastically exciting.

Most of Ancient Rome requires a lot of imagination to get to its original grandeur. A few columns here, walls and domes stripped of their architecture there. The Ara Pacis is almost complete (thanks to reconstruction in the 1930s that would probably be frowned upon by modern archaeology.)  It is an altar, built by Augustus upon his return from foreign wars to declare, and give thanks for the fact, that the Roman world was now at peace.  The altar itself, on a platform up a series of steps, is relatively plain. But it's surrounded by screening walls covered with gorgeous carved reliefs. The lower panels are a swirling, lush fantasy of vines and flowers, while the upper present stories from Roman mythology and show Augustus, his family and other prominent citizens processing to make sacrifices on the altar within. It's these contemporary portraits that make the altar so famous; if you've studied any Roman history, the main characters of the Augustan age were probably illustrated with photos from this monument.

It's looking magnificent. Dazzlingly clean, details sharp. You can get close to all of it, and walk into Augustus exhibit in Paris in 2014, which showed how the altar would have originally looked with its bright coat of paint. (You can find the video here.)

it. The new museum building that houses it is mostly glass, flooding the altar with light. The bulk of Augustus' mausoleum (still, sadly, an unrestored ruin) looms beyond the windows on one side, giving a nice sense of context. There's a wonderful model in the exhibition space you pass through on the way to the altar that shows its original placement, in open fields with the original Pantheon and Augustus' tomb forming the axis points of a grassy, ceremonial space. It was a brilliant revelation, hard to conjure in your imagination from the warren of busy streets that exist today. Oddly, I saw no sign of the fabulous video reconstruction that was part of the blockbuster

A museum built to show off just one thing might seem odd, but if you appreciate ancient Rome, this is well worth your time. As is the much larger Capitoline.

Tourists with limited time always head for the Vatican Museum. Understandable, given its wealth of treasures and its climax in the Sistine chapel. But the Capitoline Museum is just as wonderful. It's almost a distillation of the Vatican experience: masterpieces of painting and ancient sculpture, displayed in a Renaissance palace with many frescoed rooms worthy of note in their own right. Here, you also get fine views from your position atop the Capitoline hill and a piazza designed by Michelangelo.

Like the Ara Pacis, the Capitoline has been much improved by renovation and modern additions. Most notable is a dramatic round gallery, flooded by light from encircling windows, in which you'll find the famous bronze statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. This originally stood at the centre of Michelangelo's piazza, where it was replaced with a copy so this original could be fully conserved and installed someplace safe from the elements.  On its plinth in the piazza, I'd never realised just how magnificent the work is. In its new home, you're much closer to it,
and can better appreciate the artistry of an equestrian bronze that, famously, wasn't matched again until the renaissance.  The new section also lets you get close to the impressive foundations of the Temple of Jupiter, something that used to just be just distant stones glimpsed from the floor of the Forum.  In other galleries you can get nose-to-nose with the original Etruscan bronze of the wolf suckling the babies Romulus and Remus (the babies are renaissance additions), see more wonderful bronzes from the ancient world and contemplate busts of all the emperors. You could spend a whole day here and be dazzled into mental submission; we went for 90 minutes of deep appreciation of a selection of wonders.

Over our three days in town we also wandered along the crest of the Palatine, explored St. Peters and ducked into the Pantheon. All had their highs (and St. Peters its lows) ... but the Ara Pacis and the Capitoline were the stars of the trip.