Borghese Gallery Privately, Collected From Your Hotel

The Borghese has one practical drawback: it sits in the middle of a park, twenty minutes uphill from the nearest useful metro stop, with an entry slot that does not move if you are late. This tour removes that problem by collecting you from your hotel and bringing you back. Three hours with a private guide, starting at the door of the villa Flaminio Ponzio built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese from the cardinal's own sketches, as a country house on what was then the edge of the city. The collection is his: Raphael, Rubens, Caravaggio, Canova, Bernini and the rest, largely still in the rooms he chose. He was Bernini's first significant patron and collected Caravaggio harder than anyone, which is why the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, the Saint Jerome and the Sick Bacchus are all under one roof. The gallery has been called the delight of Rome, and the park around it is the finest in the city. With a car at both ends you can give the park the time it deserves instead of spending it on the walk in.