In 1471, Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of ancient bronzes, including the Capitoline Wolf and the Spinario, to the Roman people, an act generally credited as the founding of the world's first public museum, more than three centuries before the Louvre opened its doors.
Michelangelo redesigned the piazza and the two palaces flanking it from 1536 onward, laying the star-patterned pavement and the gently rising staircase, or cordonata, that still frames the approach from below. Inside, the original gilded bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, moved indoors in the 1980s and replaced outside by a copy, shares the collection with the Capitoline Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus (the wolf itself is ancient, though the twins were added in the Renaissance) and the colossal fragments of a statue of Constantine, a head and hand alone taller than a person. A tunnel beneath the piazza, the Galleria Congiunzione, links the two palace buildings and runs past the foundations of Rome's ancient Tabularium archive.
