Borghese

VILLA BORGHESE AND THE BORGHESE GALLERY
The Villa Borghese was built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, who developed sketches by Scipione Borghese. The villa is home to the Borghese Gallery which has a substantial collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The gallery is shown over two floors in twenty rooms. The main floor is mostly devoted to sculpture and Roman antiquities of the first to third centuries AD. The breathtaking decorative scheme starts with the trompe l'oeil ceiling fresco in the first room.

The Villa Borghese is situated in a large landscape garden in Rome created in a naturalistic English manner. It is the second largest public park in Rome measuring 148 acres. The Spanish Steps lead up to the park and once here you must visit the Pincio in the south of the park. This is the Pinican Hill of ancient Rome and has one of the best views of all Rome.

The year 1605 saw Cardinal Scipione Borghese who was the nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of Bernini, begin to turn this former vineyard into the most extensive gardens built in Rome since Antiquity. The vineyard's site is identified with the gardens of Lucullus, the most famous in the late Roman republic. The nineteenth century saw the gardens landscaped and given an English theme and in 1903 they were bought by the commune of Rome and given to the public to enjoy.

The gardens of Villa Borghese are also home to the Villa Giulia. This villa was built as a summer residence for Pope Julius III and now contains the Etruscan Museum (Museo Etrusco). Other villas that are in the gardens of Villa Borghese are the remains of a world exposition in Rome in 1911. The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna has a collection of nineteenth and twentieth century paintings emphasizing Italian artists. Architecturally the most notable of the 1911 exposition pavilions is the English pavilion designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who later designed New Delhi. Beside the 1911 Exposition's villas, there is also the Exposition's Zoo, recently rearranged, with minimal caging, as the 'Bioparco', and the Zoological Museum (Museo di Zoologia).