This is the largest and most impressive room in the Villa, a starting point for exploring the other rooms. For a long time, the most famous statues from the Sommariva collection were housed here, now distributed throughout the museum's various rooms. At the center, in its original position, is the Venus and Mars group, sculpted in Rome by Luigi Acquisti in 1805.

The walls are adorned with one of the masterpieces of 19th-century European sculpture: the marble frieze depicting the triumphal entry of Alexander the Great into Babylon (1818-1828), created by Bertel Thorvaldsen and commissioned from the sculptor by Giovanni Battista Sommariva.

A plaster version of this high relief, conceived as an allegorical exaltation of Napoleon's conquests, was created in 1812 for the Quirinale Palace in Rome.

Looking up at the ceiling, you can see a streamlined vault created by Lodovico Pogliaghi (1857-1950), on the instructions of Duke George II.