In a storeroom on the banks of the Tiber this week a one tonne, 2,000-year-old marble basin celebrating the adventures of Hercules sat in a wooden crate, next to a plastic-wrapped sarcophagus and a statue sealed in a blue box resembling the Tardis.
The priceless pieces are part of the world’s largest private collection of Roman art, 623 works amassed by the secretive Torlonia family and hidden from the world since the 1940s. This week, however, lorries lined up to collect them for installation in the most eagerly awaited exhibition in Rome in decades.
“Experts have only seen these works in sketches and old catalogues and they are going to be shocked when they see them for the first time in the flesh,” said Salvatore
