★★★★★ 5.0
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Galleria Borghese
Those portico columns aren't reproductions - they're 2,000-year-old fragments from the Arch of Claudius, recycled from Via Flaminia. This cream-colored villa, finished in 1620 by architect Giovanni Vasanzio, housed one 27-year-old cardinal's slightly questionable art obsession. Scipione Borghese confiscated 107 paintings from Cavalier d'Arpino and literally had Raphael's Deposition stolen from a church in Perugia. Inside, the world's largest Bernini collection fills two floors - sculptures down here, paintings upstairs. What tourists miss? Underground "conserve della neve" - 17th-century refrigeration rooms chilling Scipione's drinks beneath your feet. And those gardens here on Piazzale Scipione Borghese? Once held a full zoo with lions, ostriches, and peacocks roaming around.
Did You Know?
- Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, was such a passionate art collector that he sometimes used his influence to acquire masterpieces by questionable means—even coercing artists to hand over their works—and built the villa to rival Europe’s greatest collections, making it a symbol of Baroque-era ambition and papal power.
- The Borghese Gallery is home to the world’s most extensive collection of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptures, including dramatic masterpieces like Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpina, which were commissioned specifically for the villa and remain highlights for visitors to this day.
- Two of the gallery’s most famous ancient sculptures, the Borghese Gladiator and the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, were sold to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808 and now reside in the Louvre—a story of political pressure and the shifting fortunes of art collections across Europe.