The Vatican Museums house one of the world’s greatest collections of Greek and Roman sculpture, much of it gathered by Renaissance popes. Highlights include portrait busts of emperors such as Augustus, Tiberius, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius, offering a visual record of imperial succession, alongside works attributed to or inspired by Greek masters like Pythagoras and Aristotle. Perhaps the collection’s single most famous piece is the Laocoön, a dramatic marble group depicting the Trojan priest and his sons being crushed by serpents, rediscovered in Rome in 1506 and immediately celebrated as a masterpiece of ancient sculpture; its rippling musculature and anguished expressions had an enormous influence on Renaissance and Baroque artists, including Michelangelo.