Villa Borghese site features

It reads as countryside until you notice how much of it was drawn. Villa Borghese encloses buildings, sculptures, monuments and fountains by illustrious artists of Baroque, Neoclassical and eclectic art, set among centuries-old trees, small lakes, Italian gardens and large open spaces — and the city's own account stresses that all of it was made with great care rather than left to grow.

The water is the set piece. In the middle of the sheet of water stands the Tempietto dedicated to Aesculapius, a small temple on its own island, and along the banks sit the Meridiana and the Fontana della Famiglia dei Satiri. You walk round it rather than through it, which is why the temple stays at a distance however long you look.

Then the avenues take over and the geometry becomes obvious. Straight walks meet at right angles, with neoclassical temples placed where they terminate — a park laid out as a sequence of views rather than a single lawn.

Four small gardens are enclosed within the big one. The secret gardens — the Giardino dell'Uccelliera, the Giardino Vecchio, the Giardino della Meridiana and the Giardino della Coltivazione — were reconstructed from historical and iconographic documentation, so they are restorations of a documented plan rather than survivals.

And one space is shaped for horses. Piazza di Siena, named for the Borghese family's city of origin, is an oval arena in the trees, seat of the International Horse Show and used for events and concerts.

It has been everybody's since 1903, when the Italian state bought the villa and made it a public park.

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.