Galleria Corsini

The draw

An eighteenth-century picture gallery still hanging where it was hung. When the Corsini family sold up in 1883 they sold the palace and the pictures together, so nothing was ever rehung, relit or redistributed. What you walk into is a private collection in its own rooms: Beato Angelico, Rubens, Van Dyck, Murillo and Ribera, stacked on the walls in the manner of the century that assembled them. It is in Trastevere, directly opposite the Villa Farnesina, and the gardens behind it are the city's Botanical Garden.

The problem when visiting

The ticket is the confusing part, not the gallery. There are three quite different ways to buy, and the cheapest is rarely the best: €8 gets you this gallery alone, €10 adds the Botanical Garden, and €15 adds Palazzo Barberini across the river and stays valid for twenty days. Visitors routinely pay €8, walk out, and never learn that seven euros more would have bought them one of the great painting collections in Italy with three weeks to use it. It also closes on Mondays, and it is one floor — people expecting a large museum are surprised by how quickly it is done.

The tactic

Work out first whether you will see Palazzo Barberini in the next twenty days. If there is any chance, buy the €15 ticket here — or €2 if you are an EU citizen aged 18 to 25, which is the best-value ticket in Rome. If you truly only want this gallery, take the €8, or the €10 with the Orto Botanico, whose entrance is right there.

Inside, stand back. The hang is stacked and crowded by design, and reading it picture by picture misses what makes the room worth the trip. Pair it with the Villa Farnesina opposite — but note that the Farnesina is a separate ticket and shuts at 14.00, so do that one first.

Skip it if you:

• Are here on a Monday. Closed, and so is Palazzo Barberini.
• Want a large museum. This is one floor and about seventy-five minutes.
• Have already done the Doria Pamphilj this trip. Same pleasure — a private collection in its own rooms — and doing both back to back blunts each.

Use the whole ticket if you buy the €15. It covers Palazzo Barberini for twenty days and most people never cross the river to use it. Spreading visitors over two buildings is better for both than concentrating them in one.

Stand back rather than lean in. The pictures hang low and close in rooms with no barriers, because this was a private apartment and remains arranged as one.

No flash. Panel and canvas from the early Renaissance to the eighteenth century, in a building lit largely by its windows.

Buy the combined garden ticket rather than two separate ones. It costs less, and it puts money into the Orto Botanico, which maintains the ground Fuga's facade was designed to be seen from.

Remember the academy works here. The Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei keeps offices in the same palace; the gallery is one occupant of a working building, not the whole of it.

Three ways to buy, and the cheapest is usually wrong

Galleria Corsini alone: €8.00, or €6.00 reduced for partner operators.

Galleria Corsini and Palazzo Barberini together: €15.00, valid twenty days. That is €7 more than this gallery alone, and it buys one of the most important painting collections in Italy — Raphael's La Fornarina, Caravaggio's Judith, Holbein's Henry VIII — with three weeks to get across the river and use it. For EU citizens aged 18 to 25 that same two-palace ticket is €2.00. Metrebus card holders pay €12.00.

Galleria Corsini and the Orto Botanico: €10.00, or €6.00 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25. The Botanical Garden is the ground this palace's garden front looks onto, so the two genuinely belong together.

The mistake to avoid is paying €8 by default. Work out whether Palazzo Barberini is plausible in the next twenty days before you decide; if it is, the €15 is the buy.

Hours

Closed Mondays. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 to 19.00, with last entrance at 18.00. Also closed 25 December and 1 January — the same calendar as Palazzo Barberini, which shares its ticket.

Ticket & Pass Decision Matrix

What is free

The garden front, if you are in the Botanical Garden. Fuga's long elevation is best seen from the Orto Botanico behind the palace — which is itself ticketed, so "free" here means only the street. From the Via della Lungara you see a narrow-street facade that gives away very little; the Villa Farnesina opposite is the better free look on this road.

Getting there

Via della Lungara 10, Trastevere. Buses 23 and 280. It is a short walk from Ponte Sisto and directly across the street from the Villa Farnesina.

On the ground

Allow about seventy-five minutes. This is one floor of an eighteenth-century apartment rather than a museum built for the purpose, and the pleasure of it is the arrangement — stand back far enough to see a whole wall at once.

Any day except Monday, when this gallery and Palazzo Barberini are both closed.

Morning, if you are pairing it with the Villa Farnesina across the road. The Farnesina shuts at 14.00 with last entry at 13.15, so it has to come first; the Corsini runs to 19.00 and can absorb the afternoon.

Arrive before 18.00. Last entrance is an hour before the 19.00 close — the same trap as Palazzo Barberini, whose ticket office also shuts early.

Spring and autumn for the combined garden ticket. The Orto Botanico is the other half of the €10 ticket and it is a garden; in August it is hot and in January it is bare.

It is never crowded. That is worth saying plainly: this is a major collection in a capital city where queueing is the norm, and there is no queue.