Galleria Borghese, Art museum in Villa Borghese Pinciana, Rome, Italy
Galleria Borghese displays paintings, sculptures and antiquities across twenty rooms on two floors inside a former villa residence from 1605. The building stands within the park of Villa Borghese and combines an art collection with neoclassical interior design.
Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, built the collection between 1605 and 1621 through purchases and occasional forceful seizures. The villa was later partially remodelled but retained its basic structure as a display space for the family's artworks.
The ground floor rooms retain their early 17th-century wall decoration, with frescoes, marble and gilded stucco work. Each room is designed as a total work of art, placing sculptures and paintings in close dialogue with the architecture.
Visitors must book tickets in advance for two-hour time slots, with opening from Tuesday through Sunday between 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM. The rooms are partly reached by stairs, and the number of visitors per slot is limited to protect the artworks.
The floors of several rooms contain ancient Roman mosaics, including a gladiator scene discovered in 1834 at the family estate on Via Casilina. These floor mosaics link the artworks on the walls with archaeological finds from the Roman imperial period.
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