Moments from Galleria Borghese

Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a nephew of Pope Paul V with both immense wealth and a genuine, discerning eye, built this villa starting in 1613 specifically to house the art collection he'd spent years assembling, much of it, by his own era's none-too-scrupulous standards, acquired through methods that ranged from generous patronage to outright confiscation. What resulted is one of the most concentrated troves of Baroque sculpture anywhere: several of Bernini's greatest works, including Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpina, were carved for this specific room, at this specific scale, meant to be walked around and viewed from multiple angles exactly as they still are today, alongside major Caravaggio paintings the cardinal acquired directly, sometimes under legally dubious circumstances.

Entry is tightly controlled, timed two-hour slots with a strict cap on visitor numbers, which makes the Borghese one of the rare major Roman collections you can see without fighting a crowd, book well ahead since slots sell out. Walk all the way around the major Bernini sculptures rather than viewing them from a single fixed spot, they were designed with dramatic reveals built in, Apollo and Daphne looks like an entirely different, calmer sculpture from the front than it does from the angle where you can see Daphne's fingers already turning into laurel branches. The villa sits inside the Villa Borghese gardens, Rome's answer to Central Park, worth a walk before or after.