Keats-Shelley House

Duration

45–75 min

Cost

€6 / €5

Photos

No flash

Highlight

Keats's bedroom

Why Visit the Keats-Shelley House?

Below your feet, 30,000 people a day pose on the Spanish Steps. Two flights up, in a quiet salmon-pink room with green shutters, you can stand in the small room where a 25-year-old John Keats spent his final weeks. According to Joseph Severn's accounts of Keats's final illness, the poet spoke repeatedly about death and being beneath the earth; some famous formulations — such as the line about daisies growing over him — survive through Severn's later recollections rather than contemporaneous transcripts. The Keats-Shelley House is the most concentrated literary pilgrimage in Italy — and one of the most surprising contrasts in the entire city.

The Death of Keats

The actual room where one of the greatest English poets died at 25. The original ceiling is the one he looked at — preserved through Roman fumigation laws.

A World-Class Library

8,000+ volumes of first editions, letters and Romantic-era literature — one of the world's most important collections of Romantic literature, in a single magnificent two-story room.

Shelley & Byron Manuscripts

Pages in Shelley's and Byron's own hand, locks of hair, and a bone fragment traditionally associated with Shelley's cremation on the beach in 1822.

Calm Above the Crowds

A reverential, almost monastic interior two floors above the busiest square in Rome. Often you will be the only visitor in Keats's room.

What to See Inside

The Salone

Your first room. Portraits of Keats, Shelley, Byron and Joseph Severn line the walls; a chronological introduction explains why three of the greatest English Romantic poets died in Mediterranean exile within three years of each other (1821–24) and why a memorial museum was opened here in 1909.

The Library

The museum's largest and most spectacular room — a two-story wood-panelled library holding over 8,000 volumes: first editions of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Mary Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, alongside scholarly editions of every major Romantic poet. One of the world's most important collections of Romantic literature.

The Severn Room

Dedicated to the painter Joseph Severn (1793–1879), who travelled to Rome with the dying Keats and nursed him to the end. Includes Severn's poignant deathbed sketch of Keats — drawn at 3 a.m. on 28 January 1821, with the inscription'drawn to keep me awake' — and Severn's letters describing the final days.

Shelley & Byron Room

Manuscripts in Shelley's and Byron's own hand — including pages of Adonais (Shelley's elegy for Keats) and Byron's Italian-period work — locks of hair belonging to both poets (and to Milton and Elizabeth Barrett Browning), and the most striking object in the museum: a small relic associated with Shelley — described cautiously in the museum's own catalogue — said to have been recovered by Edward Trelawny from the funeral pyre on the beach near Viareggio in 1822.

Keats's Bedroom

The smallest, simplest and most affecting room in the museum. The single window looks down on the Spanish Steps; the bed is a 19th-century reconstruction (Roman papal law required the original to be burned after a tubercular death); the ceiling is the original one Keats stared at through three months of illness. Visitors fall silent without being asked.

Death Masks & Personal Relics

The death mask of Keats, taken by the sculptor Gherardi the day after he died; a life mask of Keats taken by Benjamin Robert Haydon; a fragment of Keats's hair; and small personal objects from Joseph Severn's lifetime in Rome.

Bookshop & Reading Room

The small bookshop at the entrance carries an excellent selection of Romantic poetry, scholarly editions and the annual Keats-Shelley Review.

Keats's Bedroom — A Closer Look

On 14 November 1820, John Keats — already in the advanced stages of tuberculosis — arrived in Rome with his friend the painter Joseph Severn. They took rooms on the second floor of the building at 26 Piazza di Spagna, then a respectable casa per forestieri run by an Anglo-Italian landlady, Signora Anna Angeletti.

For three months Keats deteriorated in this small room with its single window over the new Spanish Steps. He read very little, wrote no new poetry, and asked Severn to play him Haydn on a hired piano. His most quoted last words — 'Severn — lift me up — I am dying — I shall die easy — don't be frightened — be firm, and thank God it has come' — were spoken here on the evening of 23 February 1821. He was 25 years old.

Roman papal law required that after any death from infectious disease the room be entirely fumigated, the furniture burned and the walls scraped. Signora Angeletti complied at her own expense. Almost everything in the room today is a sympathetic 19th-century reconstruction — but the coffered ceiling with its small painted rosettes is the one Keats spent three months staring at, and the window opens onto the same steps he never managed to climb again.

Four days later he was buried in the Protestant Cemetery near the Pyramid of Cestius, under a stone he had dictated himself: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'

The Library

The two-story wood-panelled Library is the museum's intellectual heart. It holds over 8,000 volumes of first editions, manuscripts, scholarly editions, letters and 19th- and 20th-century criticism of the English Romantic poets — one of the world's most important collections of Romantic literature, alongside the Bodleian's Romantic collections and the Houghton at Harvard.

The library is a working scholarly resource: visiting researchers from universities around the world consult the collection daily, and the foundation publishes the annual Keats-Shelley Review from these very rooms. For most visitors it is simply the most beautiful and most concentrated literary library you will ever stand in.

Look for: the first edition of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1820), the Pisa edition of Adonais (Shelley's elegy for Keats, 1821), Mary Shelley's privately printed editions of her husband's collected works, and a complete run of Leigh Hunt's The Examiner.

Shelley & Byron Relics

Although the building is most associated with Keats, the foundation has spent over a century assembling some of the most important Shelley and Byron relics held outside the British Library and the Bodleian.

Highlights include: a manuscript page from Shelley's Adonais(his elegy for Keats, written from Pisa within months of the death); a manuscript fragment of Byron's Don Juan; a lock of Byron's hair given to a Roman admirer in 1817; and the museum's most striking object — a small relic associated with Shelley, described cautiously in the museum's own catalogue, said to have been recovered by Edward Trelawny from the poet's funeral pyre on the beach near Viareggio after his drowning in July 1822.

The combination of intimate physical relics and intellectual first editions makes the museum unique: most literary collections hold either the books or the bodies, almost never both.

Joseph Severn — The Friend Who Stayed

The often-forgotten hero of this story is the painter Joseph Severn (1793–1879). A young, ambitious and not yet famous artist, Severn agreed at the last minute to accompany the dying Keats to Rome — knowing that he was effectively giving up two years of his career and might never come back.

For three months he nursed Keats almost single-handedly, cleaning the small bedroom, cooking what little the poet could eat, reading aloud through nights of haemorrhage. His deathbed sketch of Keats — drawn at 3 a.m. on 28 January 1821 with the inscription 'drawn to keep me awake' — is one of the most famous images of literary friendship in existence.

Severn ended up loving Rome and returning permanently. He became British Consul in the city, raised six children and lived another 58 years. When he died in 1879 he was buried, by his own request, beside John Keats in the Protestant Cemetery — fulfilling a promise made on the deathbed.

Tickets & Hours 2026

🕐 Opening Hours

• Mon–Sat: 10:00–13:00 & 14:00–18:00 (last entry 17:45)
• Closed: Sundays, 1 Jan, 1 May, 15 Aug, 25–26 Dec, Easter
• Free day: 23 February (Keats anniversary)
• The 13:00–14:00 mid-day closure is firmly enforced — plan around it.

💶 Tickets

• Standard: €6
• Reduced: €5 (students, over-65)
• Groups (6+): €4 per person
• Free: Under 12, ICOM members, 23 February
• Roma Pass: NOT included (private foundation)
• Audio guide: Free printed handout in 6 languages

The Keats-Shelley House is a private foundation, not a state museum — so the Roma Pass and the Italian state museum free Sundays do not apply. €6 is the actual ticket price you will pay at the door.

Best Time to Visit

Best of Day

10:00 right at opening — the Steps below are still relatively quiet, the rooms are cool and you may have Keats's bedroom entirely to yourself. Late afternoon (16:00–17:45) is also very calm.

Best Day

Tue–Fri are quietest. Saturdays are a little busier with weekend visitors. Closed Sundays — never come on a Sunday.

Best Season

Year-round — perfect rainy-day stop in winter, blissfully cool refuge in August. February (around the Keats anniversary on the 23rd) is particularly atmospheric.

Visitor Tips

Time the mid-day closure: 13:00–14:00 the museum locks up entirely. Either visit before 12:30 or after 14:00 — never try to slip in at 12:50.

Pick up the printed handout: Free at reception in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Japanese. Better than any audio guide.

Photography: Allowed in most rooms without flash, no tripods. Photography of the manuscripts themselves is not allowed.

Voices: The atmosphere is quiet and reverential — keep voices low, especially in Keats's bedroom.

Stairs only: The museum is on the second floor with no lift. Sadly not currently wheelchair-accessible — the foundation publishes a virtual tour for visitors who cannot manage the climb.

Pair with the cemetery: Take Metro Line A to Termini, change to Line B to Piramide. The Non-Catholic Cemetery (where Keats is buried) is a 5-minute walk from the station.

Bookshop: A small English-language bookshop at the entrance — worth a stop even if you are not visiting the museum.

Vs Other Literary House Museums

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Coming on a Sunday

Closed Sundays all year. Plan for Mon–Sat. Many visitors make the Steps trip on a Sunday and discover only at the door that the museum is shut.

Trying to enter at lunchtime

The 13:00–14:00 closure is absolute. Either visit before 12:30 or after 14:00 — there is no flexibility.

Expecting Roma Pass coverage

It is a private foundation — the Roma Pass and free state-museum Sundays do not apply. €6 always.

Skipping the Protestant Cemetery

Visiting the museum without going to Keats's actual grave near the Pyramid is missing the second half of the story. Allow a half-day for both.

Going with very young children

It is a contemplative literary museum without interactive exhibits — best for ages 12+ or for adults with a literary interest.

Loud voices in Keats's room

The atmosphere is reverential — guides will (politely) ask you to lower your voice. Keep mobile phones silent throughout.

Colosseum & Forum Tickets Nearby

The Keats-Shelley House is a perfect calm hour before the timed-entry giants. The Colosseum and Roman Forum are 15 minutes away by Metro Line A → B (one change at Termini) — both require advance booking in 2026.

Colosseum Priority Entrance

Best for: First-time visitors

Skip-the-line access to the Colosseum with entry to Roman Forum and Palatine Hill included. Perfect for first-time visitors.

• Skip-the-line entry
• Colosseum access
• Roman Forum included
• Palatine Hill included

🎟️ Compare Prices:

Colosseum Guided Tour

Best for: History enthusiasts

Expert-led tour with professional guide sharing gladiator history, architecture secrets, and ancient Roman stories.

• Professional English-speaking guide
• Skip-the-line entry
• In-depth historical commentary
• Small group experience

🎟️ Compare Prices:

Colosseum Arena & Underground

Best for: Unique experience seekers

Walk where gladiators fought on the arena floor and explore the underground chambers where they awaited their fate.

• Arena Floor access
• Underground chambers access
• Roman Forum & Palatine Hill
• Expert guided tour included

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Pair Your Visit With

Highlights at a Glance

• The room where John Keats died on 23 February 1821
• Original ceiling Keats looked at during his final illness
• Joseph Severn's deathbed sketch of Keats, drawn 'to keep me awake'
• 8,000+ volume Romantic-era library — one of the world's finest
• Manuscripts in Shelley's and Byron's own hand
• Bone fragment traditionally associated with Shelley's cremation, 1822
• Locks of hair from Keats, Shelley, Milton and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Right at the foot of the Spanish Steps — perfect with a Bernini fountain pause

How to Get There

By Metro

The easiest option in Rome — Metro Spagna (Line A) exits directly into Piazza di Spagna. The museum is the salmon-pink palazzo on the right side of the Spanish Steps, at number 26.

By Bus

• Bus 117: Stops in Piazza di Spagna (1-min walk)
• Buses 62, 63, 71, 80, 83, 85, 160: Largo Goldoni (3-min walk)
• From Termini: Metro Line A is faster than any bus

On Foot

From Trevi Fountain: 5 min via Via di Propaganda. From the Pantheon: 8 min via Via di Sant'Andrea delle Fratte. From Piazza del Popolo: 10 min via Via del Babuino. From Villa Borghese: 10 min via Trinità dei Monti.

Where to Stay Near Keats-Shelley House

Looking for convenient accommodation near Keats-Shelley House? Stay within walking distance to make the most of your visit.

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