Nestled among the tree-lined avenues of Rome’s most beloved urban park, the Borghese Gallery represents one of the pinnacles of global art collecting, the fruit of the vision of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, patron of extraordinary artists such as Bernini and Caravaggio.

Built in the early 17th century by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, Villa Borghese was not conceived as a stately or family residence, but rather as a true “palace of wonders,” a place of delight tailor-made to house and showcase one of the most extraordinary art collections in history.

At Scipione’s death in 1633, the collection was among the most important in the world, and after several costly disposals, particularly during the 19th-century Napoleonic period, in 1902 the Italian state purchased all the remaining works, thus creating the Galleria Borghese.

Villa Borghese is the stage where the genius of Bernini and the shadow of Caravaggio changed the history of art forever.

Entering the rooms of the Gallery today means admiring sculptural groups and altarpieces in the exact place for which they were commissioned or acquired, preserving the spatial relationship and natural light originally intended by the artists (such as Bernini’s sculptural groups or the imperial busts from the Roman era, the ancient porphyry sculptures, and the bas-reliefs set into the walls of the Entrance Hall and the side galleries).

Scipione Borghese’s Vision and the Art of Collecting

Unlike modern museums, born from nineteenth-century cataloging or educational purposes, the Galleria Borghese—like Roman jewels such as the Galleria Colonna or Palazzo Barberini—is a living testimony to Baroque collecting in its purest form.

Here, the works are not arranged chronologically or by school of painting, but rather according to a unified scenographic display designed to astonish the observer and create continuous dialogues between painting, sculpture, polychrome marble, and frescoes.

Scipione Borghese was a patron of the arts gifted with unerring intuition and all-consuming passion. He was among the first to understand Caravaggio’s revolution and the prodigious talent of the young Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He was also a great collector of Roman sculptures, reliefs, and sarcophagi, integrating them into the villa’s walls and niches to create a visual continuum between classical and Baroque history.

The unmissable masterpieces and their stories

The collection houses some of the most celebrated icons in the history of Western art, closely linked to the personal history of the Borghese family.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptures
In the 1620s, Bernini sculpted a series of marble statuary groups for Cardinal Scipione, capable of challenging the very material.

Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625): the exact moment of the nymph’s metamorphosis into a laurel tree to escape the god. The marble transforms before the viewer’s eyes into bark, roots, and delicate leaves.
The Rape of Proserpina (1621–1622): famous for its virtuosic rendering of the skin, where Pluto’s fingers realistically sink into the soft flesh of Proserpina’s thigh.
David (1623–1624): sculpted with unprecedented dynamism, it captures the moment of maximum athletic and expressive tension before the stone is thrown.

The Caravaggio Room
The Gallery boasts the world’s most important concentration of works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, from a single collection.

Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593–1594): an early work of extraordinary naturalistic realism.
Madonna of the Grooms (1605): rejected by the Fabbrica di San Pietro for the crudeness and humanity of the figures, it was immediately purchased by Scipione Borghese for his private collection.
David with the Head of Goliath (1609–1610): the artist’s last and dramatic painting, in which the severed head of the giant Goliath is a crude self-portrait of Caravaggio himself, sent to Rome in the hope of obtaining a papal pardon.

The Gallery also houses many other masterpieces, such as Titian‘s Sacred and Profane Love and Raphael‘s Deposition of Christ (Baglioni Altarpiece).

Paolina Borghese and Canova’s Neoclassicism

Following the marriage of Camillo Borghese and Paolina Bonaparte in 1805, the villa’s history was enriched by a new and extraordinary chapter with the arrival of Antonio Canova’s Venus Victrix, depicting Paolina reclining on a gilded wooden triclinium. The sculpture, originally equipped with a gear mechanism to rotate it and allow it to be admired 360 degrees by candlelight, represents one of the absolute pinnacles of European Neoclassicism.

The Borghese Gallery represents one of the last places in the world where the Baroque concept of “Wonder” can be fully understood: an artistic ecosystem where the beauty of the works, the decoration of the rooms, and the history of the great aristocratic families merge into a timeless tale.

And after your visit, you can stroll through the Villa’s magnificent park and admire its wonders, such as the Temple of Aesculapius, a neoclassical masterpiece that seems to float on the water. You can also enjoy a rowboat ride to admire the reflections of the vegetation between the Ionic columns, before taking a break at Vivi – Villa Borghese, perfect for a botanical lunch or aperitif immersed in the capital’s most refined greenery.

The Secret

The history of the Borghese collection is marked by a sad transfer in 1807, when Prince Camillo Borghese was forced to sell over 500 pieces from his family’s collection of ancient sculpture to Napoleon. Many Greek and Roman masterpieces were then transferred to Paris—including the Borghese Gladiator, the Borghese Vase, the Borghese Ares, the Borghese Hermaphrodite, and the Centaur Tamed by Cupid—now part of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Louvre.

Useful Info

Galleria Borghese
Piazzale Scipione Borghese 5
00197 Roma
Tel. +39 06 8413979

Full ticket: €16.00 (+ €2.00 booking fee) Reduced ticket (EU citizens aged 18-25): €2.00 (+ €2.00 booking fee) Free: Under 18s and those entitled to it (+ €2.00 booking fee)