Borghese Gallery for a Small Group: How a Family Bought Art

This collection exists because one family decided that owning the best art in Rome was worth doing properly, and had a pope in the house to make it possible. Scipione Borghese was made a cardinal by his uncle, Paul V, and spent the rest of his life converting that position into objects. He commissioned Bernini repeatedly, starting when the sculptor was still a teenager, which is why so much early Bernini is here and nowhere else. He collected Caravaggio when Caravaggio was a fugitive. What he could not buy he sometimes obtained by other means. The result is a collection that was never assembled by a museum: it was assembled by a patron with unlimited leverage and a good eye, and it stayed intact when the State bought it. That is the story the guide tells, alongside the works themselves: Bernini, Caravaggio, Canova and Raphael. Skip-the-line entry, in a group small enough for questions. Meet at Piazzale del Museo Borghese, in front of the museum entrance, fifteen minutes early. Look for the I Love Rome logo.