Villa Borghese

Villa Borghese is a grandiose park ensemble in the central part of ancient Rome, on the slopes of the Pincio hill. The park complex is made in the English style and occupies a significant area of 80 hectares. In its space, Villa Borghese contains many museum complexes, sculptures, monuments, fountains, pavilion buildings located among magnificent landscapes.

History of Villa Borghese

Marcantonio Borghese, an aristocrat and a native of Siena, moved with his family to Rome in 1550 and bought a plot of land occupied by vineyards on a hill. One of his sons, Camillo, becomes pope in 1605 (known as Paul V) and makes his nephew, Scipione Caffarelli Borghese, cardinal secretary and his adviser.

Scipione was an avid art collector. Having received the post of cardinal, in 1606 he expands the ancestral possessions on Pincho Hill and gives the order to build a villa on them to house his art collection, and around it to lay out a park with statues and fountains, later called the "Garden of Delights". The work was completed in 1933.

The villa remained in this form until the very end of the 18th century, when the new owner of the Borghese family, Marcantonio IV, further expanded the boundaries of the park and began to reconstruct buildings, gardens and fountains. New pavilions and rotundas were built.

In the 19th century, an impressive part of the neighboring lands joined the Villa. Then the landscape of the garden and park ensemble was remade into an English landscape, which has survived to this day. In 1901, the city authorities acquired Villa Borghese, giving it the status of a public park open to all.

Cultural landmark of the Eternal City

Many museum buildings and exposition pavilions have been erected on the property occupied by Villa Borghese:

• The Borghese Gallery presents an ancestral collection of works by great painters and sculptors.
• The National Gallery of Modern Art, which houses paintings by masters of the 19th-20th centuries.
• "Villa Giulia" - National Museum - collected samples of Etruscan art.
• Pietro Canonica House Museum
• Carlo Bilotti Museum
• Zoological Museum

Along the wide alleys of the park complex, you can see masterpieces of architecture in the landscape gardening style: the operating Globe Theater with Shakespearean productions, the Grotto of Wine, the Temple of Anthony and Faustina, the clock pavilion and more.

Unusual fountains attract attention: the fountain of sea horses, fountains of turtles, the Winged Victoria fountain. The entire park is decorated with marble statues and monuments to great figures from many countries of the world. The number of museum pavilions, architectural masterpieces and magnificent park ensembles concentrated here is impressive. Villa Borghese is also called the "Park of Museums", where any visitor will find something interesting and impressive.