Access to this museum, either directly or through the Egyptian Museum, is from the beautiful courtyard of the Pine cone one of the three sections of the enormous courtyard of the Belvedere designed by Bramante. The Chiaramonti Museum is called after Pius VII (1800-1823) of the Chiaramonti family; eager to continue the work of his predecessors Clement XIV and Pius VI, he arranged for a large part of the Vatican collections to be housed here. He therefore had Antonio Canova design a long corridor flanking the cortile della Pigna, to contain about 800 sculptures. In addition to this great corridor, called the Chiaramonti Gallery, and the adjacent Lapidary Gallery, reserved for the use of scholars, the New Wing which transversely links these galleries with the parallel Vatican Library is also part of this museum. The Braccio nuovo is a gallery 70 meters long, bordered by numerous niches and widening into an apse in the center
where an allegorical representation of the Nile has been placed, a copy of an Alexandrian original from the 1st to the 2nd centuries BC, discovered in 1513 near the Campo Marzio in the heart of Rome.
Among the other valuable statues in this section, we mention the most interesting of the Chiaramonti Museum, the Augustus of Prima Porta, named after the Roman neighborhood where it was found. The emperor is shown here in an attitude of regal domination, wearing armor finely decorated in relief. The whole figure exudes a sense of masterful resolution. We also point out the figure of an Amazon, a copy of an original by Polycletus, the great Greek sculptor of the 5th century BC who was a contemporary of Phidias. Another important copy is that of the Doryphorus (spear-bearer) also by Polycletus, who established the "Kanon", that is, the ideal principles for perfect human proportions.
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