Borghese Gallery is situated inside the splendid park of the Villa, just outside Porta Pinciana. In 1613 the Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, ordered to the architect Flaminio Ponzio and then Vasanzio to built his gorgeous palace outside the centre of Rome and to accommodate his extraordinary collection of art and curiosities that in his mind would recreated the “Theatre of Universe”.

The villa, how appears now after a long restoration, shows the fundamentally renovation of the insides made by Antonio Asprucci, chief of a group of painters, decorators and sculptors in the second half of 18th century when Marcantonio IV Borghese lived here. The collection, in spite of the transfer to Napoleon of some works kept in “Borghese Collection” at the Louvre Museum, can be considered one of the most expressive for the Italian art from Renaissance to Baroque time.

The tour is spread on two levels and it shows on the ground floor the extraordinary sculptures as Apollo and Dafhne, David, the Rape of Proserpina, Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the portrait of Pauline Buonaparte, Camillo Borghese wife, made by Antonio Canova. A hall is dedicated to Caravaggio masterpieces as The Sick Bacchus, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, the Madonna of the Palafrenieri and the famous David with the Head of Goliath.The first floor is mainly dedicated to the Italian paintings starting from the second half of 15th  century up to the 18th century giving evidence to the “regional schools” as the Umbro -Tuscany represented by Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Perugino, Raphael, Fra’ Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto.

The Emilian School shows works by Correggio and Parmigianino; the Venetian school gathers works by Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Veronese, Bassano and Tintoretto. The exhibition shows also works by Guido Reni, Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, Rubens, Pietro da Cortona e  Pompeo Batoni. Many are the masterpieces exhibited, among which are worth of note the Madonna and Child by Perugino, The Lady with an Unicorn and the Deposition by Raphael, Danae by Correggio and Sacred and Profane Love by Titian, Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach and the Deposition of Rubens.
 

It’s possible to add to the standard tour the visit of the beautiful Borghese Gardens.