Some say that, “The best museum in Rome is the city itself.” But with work by Caravaggio, Botticelli, Raphael, and Bernini, the Borghese Gallery collection is top notch.

The gallery is housed in Villa Borghese, which was the party villa for the Borghese family, a well off family of Italian noble and papal background. They used this villa to host extravagant shindigs and to house their extensive art collection. The villa itself is located amongst one of the largest and luscious gardens in Rome. To this day, these gardens constitute the third largest park in all of Rome, so if you love beautifully manicured hedges or have a naturally green thumb, a stroll through theses gardens on your trip to Rome will definitely conjure up feelings of joy.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, began collecting paintings, sculptures, and antiques early on. The extensive collection that he amassed over the years became the foundation of the Borghese Gallery. Once the ragers at the villa subsided in the late 18^th century, they turned the villa into a public art museum. At the dawn of the 20^th century, the family donated the gardens, buildings, and art collection to the Italian government.

This is a great gallery to visit if you have a lust for Renaissance art or the cultures of antiquity. There are also some amazing mosaics and frescos scattered throughout the villa as well. And if for some reason you have fallen off your rocker and are not feeling the art of these old masters, you could always prance about the amazing gardens that surround this gallery instead.