Villa Borghese Site Features

Galleria Borghese

The museum at the heart of the park, in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. Bernini's sculpture groups, six Caravaggios and Canova's Pauline Borghese are inside it. It is ticketed and admits visitors only in booked timed slots that sell out days ahead — the park around it is free and needs no arrangements at all.

The Pincio terrace

The park's south-western corner, looking down over Piazza del Popolo and across the city to St Peter's dome. The best free view in Rome, and correspondingly busy at sunset.

The lake and the Temple of Aesculapius

Built in the ionic style at the centre of the lake between 1785 and 1792, during the Asprucci landscaping. Rowing boats can be hired to approach it.

The Piazza di Siena

An oval arena that has held a horse show since 1922, and hosted the equestrian dressage, individual jumping and the jumping phase of the eventing at the 1960 Summer Olympics.

The Sea Horse Fountain

Executed by Vincenzo Pacetti in 1791 from a design by Christopher Unterberger.

The monuments to foreign writers

Placed along the avenues from 1904 — Victor Hugo among them. A civic layer from the park's public era, easily mistaken for Borghese-era sculpture.

The other two museums in the grounds

The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, specialising in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian art, and the Etruscan Museum in the Villa Giulia, built between 1551 and 1555 as a summer residence for Julius III.