Discover Villa Borghese

Villa Borghese is the park. It is a large public garden on the Pincian hill, free and open, and it is the reason most visitors come up here — lawns, umbrella pines, a lake, and terraces looking out over the city.

Inside it stands the Galleria Borghese, and the two are not the same visit. The gallery occupies the former Villa Borghese Pinciana, the seventeenth-century house at the heart of the estate. At the outset the building and its gardens were one design; today the gardens are treated as a separate attraction, and the practical difference is sharp — the park costs nothing and needs no arrangements, while the gallery is ticketed and admits visitors only in booked timed slots. Arriving at the park expecting to see the Bernini sculptures is the commonest mistake made here.

What is in the gallery is indoors. Bernini's sculpture groups, six Caravaggios and Canova's Pauline Borghese are inside the Casino Borghese — the building itself, not an open-air terrace or a separate garden.

How the estate came about. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, had the villa built as a villa suburbana, a country house at the edge of Rome, by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, working from Scipione's own sketches. The grounds sat outside the seventeenth-century walls, reached most easily from the Porta del Popolo. By 1644 John Evelyn was describing the place as “an Elysium of delight”, with fountains, groves and rivulets — and a vivarium holding ostriches, peacocks, swans and cranes.

The park you walk through is a later design. Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese (1730–1800) began recasting the formal garden architecture into an English landscape garden, and from about 1775 worked under the architect Antonio Asprucci — the same man who redecorated the gallery's interior. The whole estate, gardens and parkland included, was sold to the Italian government in 1902, which is when a private property became the public park it is now.

Other museums share the grounds. The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, which specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian art, and the Museo Nazionale Etrusco are both in or near the gardens.

Villa Borghese is the park. It is a large public garden on the Pincian hill, free and open, and it is the reason most visitors come up here — lawns, umbrella pines, a lake, and terraces looking out over the city.

Inside it stands the Galleria Borghese, and the two are not the same visit. The gallery occupies the former Villa Borghese Pinciana, the seventeenth-century house at the heart of the estate. At the outset the building and its gardens were one design; today the gardens are treated as a separate attraction, and the practical difference is sharp — the park costs nothing and needs no arrangements, while the gallery is ticketed and admits visitors only in booked timed slots. Arriving at the park expecting to see the Bernini sculptures is the commonest mistake made here.

What is in the gallery is indoors. Bernini's sculpture groups, six Caravaggios and Canova's Pauline Borghese are inside the Casino Borghese — the building itself, not an open-air terrace or a separate garden.

How the estate came about. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, had the villa built as a villa suburbana, a country house at the edge of Rome, by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, working from Scipione's own sketches. The grounds sat outside the seventeenth-century walls, reached most easily from the Porta del Popolo. By 1644 John Evelyn was describing the place as “an Elysium of delight”, with fountains, groves and rivulets — and a vivarium holding ostriches, peacocks, swans and cranes.

The park you walk through is a later design. Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese (1730–1800) began recasting the formal garden architecture into an English landscape garden, and from about 1775 worked under the architect Antonio Asprucci — the same man who redecorated the gallery's interior. The whole estate, gardens and parkland included, was sold to the Italian government in 1902, which is when a private property became the public park it is now.

Other museums share the grounds. The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, which specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian art, and the Museo Nazionale Etrusco are both in or near the gardens.

80 hectares, and the third-largest public park in Rome after Villa Doria Pamphili and Villa Ada. It sits on the Pincian hill above the northern edge of the historic centre, which is why its south-western corner is a terrace rather than a boundary.

It is an English landscape garden, not an Italian one, and that is deliberate. The seventeenth-century formal layout was dismantled in the eighteenth century by Marcantonio Borghese, 5th Prince of Sulmona, and remade as irregular planting with contrived views — winding paths, scattered groves, open lawns and a lake. Visitors who arrive expecting box hedges and axial symmetry are looking for something that was removed on purpose.

The lake is the composed centrepiece. The Temple of Aesculapius stands in the middle of it, built in the ionic style between 1785 and 1792, and the whole arrangement — water, temple, trees behind — is a designed view rather than a feature that happened.

Umbrella pines set the character. The high flat canopies give the park its silhouette from anywhere in the city below, and they are why the shade here is dappled and high rather than dense.

The edges are the weakness. Heavy traffic runs along three sides, so the interior is quiet and the perimeter is not. The Pincio terrace at the south-west is the one edge that is entirely an asset: it looks down over Piazza del Popolo and across the roofs to St Peter's dome.

The park's most remarkable biological fact happened in England. In 1896 William Waldorf Astor bought the Borghese Balustrade and had it installed at Cliveden, his English estate. In 2004 a colony of Papillifera bidens — a small Mediterranean land snail — was found living on that balustrade, new to the English fauna. The presumption is that the species was accidentally imported with the stonework in the late nineteenth century and has survived every English winter since. Villa Borghese exported a living population along with its masonry, and nobody noticed for more than a hundred years.

Within the park itself, the dominant organism is the umbrella pine, Pinus pinea, whose high flat canopy defines the skyline here and across Rome. The mature stands are the park's most significant living structure and the reason the shade is high and broken rather than closed.

The lake supports the visible wildlife — waterfowl, turtles on the margins — and is the one body of standing water in a large area of dense city, which concentrates what lives here.

Treat the scale as the conservation story. Eighty hectares of mature trees inside a city of this density is a habitat by virtue of size alone, and the pressure on it is footfall and traffic on the perimeter rather than anything dramatic.

The easiest way in avoids the climb entirely. Spagna on Metro A has a lift that reaches the Pincio level, putting you at the park's best corner without the steps.

On foot from the centre: up the Spanish Steps to the Pincio, or from Piazza del Popolo up the ramps to the same terrace. Both are uphill; the ramps are gentler than the steps.

By metro and tram: Flaminio on Line A for the Piazza del Popolo side, Spagna for the Pincio. Tram 19 and bus 910 serve the Via Pinciana edge, which is the closest approach to the Galleria Borghese.

Inside, allow for the distance. The park is 80 hectares and the walk from the Pincio to the Galleria is fifteen to twenty minutes. If you have a booked slot at the gallery, that walk is the commonest reason people miss it.

Do not drive. The internal roads are restricted, the approaches fall under the central ZTL rules, and there is no visitor parking.

Is Villa Borghese the same as the Galleria Borghese? No, and it is the most common confusion in this part of Rome. Villa Borghese is the free public park; the Galleria Borghese is a ticketed museum inside it that requires a booked timed slot.

Do I need a ticket for the park? No. It is open public parkland, free and unticketed, and has been since 1903.

How big is it? 80 hectares — the third-largest public park in Rome, after Villa Doria Pamphili and Villa Ada.

Where is the famous view? The Pincio terrace at the south-western corner, over Piazza del Popolo and across the city to St Peter's dome.

Why does it not look like an Italian garden? Because it was deliberately remade as an English landscape garden in the eighteenth century by Marcantonio Borghese, 5th Prince of Sulmona, with Antonio Asprucci and his son Mario landscaping it from 1782 over more than twenty years.

What else is inside the park? The Galleria Borghese, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, and the Etruscan Museum in the Villa Giulia — built 1551 to 1555 as a summer residence for Julius III. There is also a lake with boats, a zoo and a cinema.

What is the Piazza di Siena? An oval arena in the park that has held a horse show since 1922 and hosted equestrian events at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

Is it true the park exported a snail to England? Effectively, yes. Its balustrade was bought by William Waldorf Astor in 1896 and installed at Cliveden; in 2004 a colony of the Mediterranean land snail Papillifera bidens was found living on it there, presumed to have arrived with the stone and survived ever since.