If you’re looking for something to do after a day of museum-hopping and cobblestone strolling, make your way down to Lungo il Tevere and spend your evening by the river
Every summer, the banks of the Tiber River transform into one of Rome’s most beloved gathering places. Lungo il Tevere Roma, now in its 24th edition, is the open-air festival that takes over the stretch between Ponte Sublicio and Ponte Sisto from 5 June to 24 August 2026, bringing with it restaurants, bars, markets, live music, exhibitions, and a packed calendar of cultural events that draws an expected two million visitors each season.
Whether you’re looking for a late dinner, a post-sunset cocktail, or simply a place to wander with good company, this is where Rome spends its summer nights.
The festival runs every evening from 7pm to 2am across 80 nights of continuous programming. This year’s edition includes 60 commercial stands, 15 food and drink outlets, 3 dedicated cultural areas, and over 200 artistic performances across the full run.
On the food side, expect everything from Roman street food classics to international kitchens, wine bars, craft beer, and cocktail stands set directly on the riverbank. The market area covers handmade jewellery, artisanal products, textiles, books, and accessories from local and regional producers.
Entertainment this year includes live screenings for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, foosball tables, and various games and installations scattered along the walkway, enough to fill an evening even if you arrive with no particular plan.
With four entrances at Ponte Cestio, Garibaldi, Sisto, and Sublicio, and numerous ways to experience the walk, Lungo il tevere is the place to be on a gorgeous Roman evening. You do not want to miss this modern summer staple of Rome.
20th Century Mexico Meets Rome in Villa Caffarelli’s Newest Exhibit
From June 9 to December 13, 2026, the Capitoline Museums’ Villa Caffarelli hosts Diego Rivera and the Construction of Modern Art in Mexico City in the 20th Century, the first exhibition in Italy dedicated to Diego Rivera, one of Mexico’s most celebrated painters and muralists.
The exhibition brings together more than 140 works, including 30 by Rivera, alongside masterpieces by some of the most important Mexican artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Frida Kahlo, José María Velasco, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, María Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Montenegro, Dr. Atl and Saturnino Herrán.
Through paintings, photographs and videos, the show explores the development of modern Mexican art and the creation of a visual language that combined tradition, avant-garde experimentation and a strong sense of national identity. Rivera’s work is placed at the centre of a broader artistic movement that helped define Mexico’s image in the 20th century.
Rather than focusing only on Rivera’s famous murals, the exhibition also highlights his cubist, modernist and more experimental phases. Among the most notable works on display are his cubist pieces View of Toledo and Sailor at Breakfast, as well as The Painter’s Studio. His role in the Mexican muralist movement is explored throughout the exhibition, although there are no actual murals by Rivera on display.
The other artists featured in the show reflect the richness and diversity of modern Mexican art. Their works range from modernism, cubism and abstraction to surrealism, post-impressionism and realism. Some paintings depict landscapes of Mexico and Europe, others focus on still lifes, indigenous women at the market, social themes and symbolic visions. Together, they reveal a country in transformation, where art became a way to reflect on identity, history, social change and modern life.
The exhibition also includes two still lifes by Frida Kahlo, a life-sized portrait of Rivera by Alexandre Zinoviev, and Juan O’Gorman’s surreal Project for the Monument of the Birth of Venus. Photographs, including images of Rivera taken by Tina Modotti, and video material further enrich the visitor experience.
Structured around four thematic sections, the exhibition traces Rivera’s academic training, his dialogue with the European avant-garde, the Mexican cultural renaissance after the Revolution, and the legacy of Mexican modern art beyond social realism.
Diego Rivera and the Construction of Modern Art in Mexico City in the 20th Century is a must-see for art lovers in Rome. It offers a rare opportunity to discover the colours, tensions and creative force of modern Mexico through the work of Rivera and the artists who helped shape one of the most powerful artistic traditions of the 20th century.
From May 20 to September 28, 2026, Villa Medici is hosting the fifth edition of the Festival des Cabanes.
Set in the Renaissance gardens of Villa Medici, near the Spanish Steps, the fifth edition of the Festival des Cabanes runs from May 20 to September 28, 2026. The festival transforms the grounds of the French Academy in Rome into a laboratory for architectural experimentation, presenting six temporary cabins made from wood, metal and recycled materials.
Designed by architects, artists and designers, the installations explore sustainable construction, non-invasive architecture and new ways of connecting built spaces with the surrounding landscape.
The concept behind the cabane serves as a creative starting point, prompting architects, designers, artists, and landscape architects to ask important questions: How can we build in ways that are gentle on the environment?What might sustainable living look like in the future?
For those visiting Rome this summer, Festival des Cabanes offers a refreshing and thought-provoking break from traditional sightseeing. It’s a chance to see how contemporary creative minds are reimagining space, right in the heart of one of the city’s most iconic cultural landmarks.
Bento Architecture has created a suspended dome made from wood and mycelium, offering visitors shade and coolness while reinterpreting the archetype of the Roman dome.
ECAL, the University of Art and Design Lausanne, has created a trompe-l’œil façade using ceramic tiles, giving the illusion of a complete house within the garden.
Foundation Huttopia raised a sustainable tent-like cabin designed for sustainable housing and based on similar structures used by the Cree Nation in Quebec.
NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti has reused materials from the 2025 exhibition to create chairs and seating areas for the Villa Medici gardens.
PRÌA and VELIA have arranged terracotta vessels around a travertine base to create a natural cooling system beneath the garden’s trees, offering visitors a shaded place to sit.
Finally, Salazarsequeromedina presents a simple wooden pavilion with an awning, designed as a refuge for birds and a shaded space where visitors can pause and contemplate.
The Festival des Cabanes 2026 is open from May 20 to September 28. Tickets cost €10 at full price and €8 for visitors aged 18–24. Admission is free for visitors under 18, eligible members and visitors with disabilities.
As part of the Festival des Cabanes, Villa Medici will host Nuit des Cabanes – Living Tomorrow on June 25 from 5pm to midnight. The evening will feature more than twenty events across the gardens, including workshops, performances, readings, tastings, concerts and DJ sets.
The programme explores sustainability, climate-conscious solutions and new ways of reconnecting with nature through music, dance, talks and participatory activities.
A separate €5 pass is required. Some activities also require advance booking at no additional cost, while the remaining events are accessible to pass holders subject to availability.
Over 200 photographs to explore the intersection between art, the human body and physical perfection at Ara Pacis Museum
From May 29 to October 4 2026, Rome’s Ara Pacis Museum is hosting The Shapes of Beauty, a collection of over 200 photographs by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Curated by Denis Curti, the show explores the relationship between art, the human body and the idea of physical perfection.
Divided into roughly six sections, The Shapes of Beauty exhibition is a must-see for those looking for a new twist on the portrayal of the human body on film. Each section is unique, covering various aspects of Mapplethorpe’s work and styles. The beginning section has newspaper clipping collages of sensual scenes, a cross stitched with white carpet, a painting of a flower, and a photograph of a nude man holding a cat. While probably the exhibition’s least exciting section, it is necessary to understand the rest of the work on display and the creative processes Mapplethorpe took.
The next section is dedicated to his two “muses”: friend, lover, and confidant Patti Smith, and bodybuilder and model Lisa Lyon. Smith was one of the most important figures in Mapplethorpe’s life, and the photographs of her on display are cheerful, more candid, and diverse than the other subjects displayed. The photos of Lyon are a representation of Mapplethorpe’s fascination with her masculine physique yet feminine beauty. She is posed flexing and revealing her musculature, evoking a more masculine style of photography, but she is also posed wearing animal print dresses and laying down, appealing to her femininity. These women held great influence in the life of Mapplethorpe, and the care he took in creating the photos is evident on a personal level, rather than an aesthetic level.
Continuing on, we see various self-portraits of Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe’s life was short as he passed away at 42 from HIV/AIDS. The self-portraits on display are from the final years of his life, and while he was in great pain taking them and curating them, his pain is not reflected in the pictures presented. He is seen wearing various costumes and in various poses, the most striking of which is him staring at the camera in a leather jacket holding a tommy gun with a pentagram painted on the wall behind him. Contrast this with a photo of him in drag and makeup, smiling off to the side. Human personalities are complex and vibrant and the photos on display provide an excellent look into Mapplethorpe’s.
After his self-portraits are the portraits he took of various artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe lived and did a majority of his work in New York City in the 70s and 80s, at first taking pictures of his fellow artist friends, but then branching into celebrity photography. Some of the more recognizable portraits on display are those of Yoko Ono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, and Christopher Lambert. While none of the portraits are particularly remarkable in terms of style or posing, the remarkable thing is seeing how many different artists and celebrities he was able to interact with during his short career.
The Shapes of Beauty is the main event. These photos feature mostly nude, muscular male and female models, posing in a way that evokes that of ancient sculpture. There is a wall dedicated to comparisons of each photograph with their real life-inspired counterpart, and the room also contains two first century AD sculptures from the Capitoline Museum: the Statue of Aphrodite and the Statue of an Athlete. The photographs are not your typical “photos of an athlete.” Mapplethorpe instead brings his focus in on very specific body parts. Some pictures are of arms coming from the side of the frame, some are of clenched male and female buttocks, some are bare chests, some are genitals.
The exhibition is not meant to be pornographic, but rather a celebration of the human physique through simple, personal photographs. No photograph feels out of place within this section, and the point is to examine the beauty of the human body. This beauty is contrasted with flowers as well. Mapplethorpe is famous for his photographs of flowers, many collected in his posthumous 1990 book Flowers. Often images of models are accompanied by a collection of flower images, showing not only the shapes of beauty within the human world, but in the natural world as well.
The exhibition concludes with photos Mapplethorpe took while in Italy. This exhibition is tailored to every location it is shown in, and Mapplethorpe’s photographs here deviate from the others, displaying the beauty of Italian architecture and landscape rather than more flowers or models.
Robert Mapplethorpe’s “The Shapes of Beauty” is a must-see for art and photography lovers everywhere. The presentation is simple, but the themes are complex and evocative. This is not your ordinary photo gallery, and it is not afraid to tell you that either. Spend a good 20-30 minutes wandering through the sections and then be sure to sit for the brief explanatory video between the Lisa Lyon and self-portrait sections to gain more insight into the creative processes of Robert Mapplethorpe.
The exhibition has audio guides available in several languages, a podcast that will be releasing shortly after the exhibition’s opening with two episodes diving deeper into the history of the collection, and it is fully available to experience for those deaf or blind. Opening May 29, you do not want to miss this unique experience.
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