Borghese Gallery Private Tour, Three Hours for One Collection

Three hours with a private guide in a museum that most people are given two. The extra time is the reason to book this rather than a standard slot, because the Borghese is small and dense, and the difference between seeing it and reading it is time in front of each room. The collection belonged to one man. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, started buying in the first years of the 17th century and did not stop. He commissioned Flaminio Ponzio to build the villa from his own sketches, as a villa suburbana on what was then the edge of Rome, and filled it. He was Bernini's first serious patron and he collected Caravaggio with an appetite that was not entirely legal: the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Saint Jerome Writing and the Sick Bacchus are all here. The Italian State bought the rest of the collection and the building in 1902, which is why a private family's taste is now a public museum and why nothing has been dispersed. One condition to know before booking: all sales are final and cancellations are not refunded, whatever the notice.