Borghese Gallery in Order: Sculpture Below, Paintings Above

The building sorts itself by medium, and this tour follows that logic instead of fighting it. The ground floor is sculpture. It opens with Bernini's Rape of Proserpina and the Latin myth behind it, a god taking a girl into the underworld, carved so that the moment of grabbing is what you see: the hand closing on the thigh, the marble giving under the fingers. Then Apollo and Daphne and the David, and by the third room the point has made itself, that this material was being asked to do something new. Upstairs is painting. Raphael, and the Caravaggios, including the Young Sick Bacchus and the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, both early, both painted when he was working out what he could get away with. The rooms are worth looking up at as well. The ceilings are frescoed end to end and the mouldings are gilded, and the collection was arranged to be seen inside that. Two hours, semi-private group, headsets so the commentary is audible over the room.