Galleria Borghese
Cardinal Scipione Borghese's villa in Rome, housing Bernini marbles and paintings by Caravaggio and Titian.
The Galleria Borghese occupies the Villa Borghese Pinciana, a garden pavilion built between 1613 and 1616 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. Flaminio Ponzio drew up the design and the Flemish architect Giovanni Vasanzio completed it after his death. The cardinal conceived the building from the start as a setting for sculpture and painting, and its twenty rooms remain arranged much as a collector's house rather than a conventional gallery, with frescoed ceilings, ancient marbles and inlaid floors forming part of the display.
The collection passed to the Italian state in 1902 and opened to the public the following year. It is celebrated above all for Gian Lorenzo Bernini's early marbles, including Apollo and Daphne, The Rape of Proserpina and David, and for six paintings by Caravaggio. Works by Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Rubens and Canova hang alongside them. Because the rooms are small, admission is controlled by two-hour time slots with a limited number of visitors, so tickets must be reserved in advance of a visit.
Highlights
- Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpina in their original rooms
- Six Caravaggio paintings, among them Boy with a Basket of Fruit
- Canova's reclining portrait of Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix
- Frescoed ceilings and antique marbles set into the villa's own decoration
