Rome

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Galleria Borghese

Note: Booking is essential.

Begun in 1608, the Casino Borghese was designed to house the art collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Bernini’s greatest patron. The interior decoration (1775-90) was fully restored in the 1990s. A curved double staircase leads to the imposing entrance salon, with fourth-century AD floor mosaics showing gladiators fighting wild animals. In Room 1 is Antonio Canova’s 1808 waxed marble figure of Pauline, sister of Napoleon and wife of Prince Camillo Borghese, as a topless Venus; Prince Camillo thought the work so provocative that he forbade even the artist from seeing it after completion. Rooms 2-4 contain some spectacular sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini: the David (1624) in Room 2 is a self-portrait of the artist; Room 3 houses his Apollo and Daphne (1625); Room 4 his Rape of Proserpine (1622). Room 5 contains important pieces of classical sculpture, including a Roman copy of a Greek dancing faun and a sleeping hermaphrodite. Bernini’s Aeneas and Anchises (1620) dominates Room 6, while Room 7 is Egyptian-themed: the classical statues include a second-century Isis. The six Caravaggios in Room 8 include the Boy with a Basket of Fruit (c1594) and the Sick Bacchus (c1593), believed to be a self-portrait.

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