Borghese Gallery for Fifteen, Special Collections Included

Start with the part other listings leave out: getting there. The gallery sits inside a large park and there is no metro stop at the door. From Metro Line A at Spagna it is a twenty-minute walk uphill through the gardens; buses 52, 53, 83 and 360 stop closer; a taxi drops you at the gate. Allow for it, because a missed slot is not rebooked. The meeting point is Piazzale del Museo Borghese, at the small door beside the main entrance, and the coordinator holds a blue BIBBOTOURS flag. Arrive fifteen to twenty minutes early. The tour itself is capped at fifteen and runs the building in order: Bernini's sculpture on the ground floor, through the frescoed Baroque rooms, then upstairs to the paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael and Titian. It ends in the special collections, the rooms of lesser-known works that most visitors skip because two hours is not long and the famous pieces are downstairs. That is where a guide earns the fee: knowing what is worth the last twenty minutes of a timed slot.