Borghese Gallery with an Art Historian, Fifteen at Most

The first thing you notice walking in is how quiet it is. The Borghese admits only a set number of people each day and holds them to a slot, so the rooms never fill the way the Vatican Museums do. That single administrative decision is why this collection can still be looked at properly. The guide is an art historian and the group is capped at fifteen, walking the twenty rooms of Cardinal Scipione Borghese's villa. On the route: Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath and his Saint John the Baptist, Antonio Canova's Pauline Bonaparte, Raphael's Deposition, and the three Berninis that between them define Baroque sculpture, Apollo and Daphne, the Rape of Proserpina and the David. Many of these works were commissioned for these rooms, which is unusual. You are not looking at a collection assembled elsewhere and installed here; you are looking at the objects in the positions their first owner chose for them. The marble floors and the painted ceilings are part of that arrangement. Meet at the double staircase directly in front of the gallery, fifteen minutes before the start. The guide holds a green Walks sign.