Short answer. The Galleria Borghese is compact for a museum of its fame: 20 frescoed rooms, a portico and an entrance hall, and the visit is limited to 2 hours. The famous works are Bernini’s marble groups, Canova’s Pauline Borghese Bonaparte, five paintings by Caravaggio, Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love and Raphael’s Deposition. We took the dates and rooms from the museum’s online catalogue, read on 23 October 2026. Rooms and displays change, so check the museum’s site before you go.
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Book tickets and tours →How is the museum laid out?
The museum says that its works are shown in 20 frescoed rooms which, together with the portico and the entrance hall, make up the public spaces. The rooms, with names translated by us from the museum’s page on the villa, are these.
- Ground floor. The entrance Salone of Mariano Rossi, then Room 1 (Paolina), Room 2 (David), Room 3 (Apollo and Daphne), Room 4 (Emperors), Room 5 (Hermaphrodite), Room 6 (Aeneas and Anchises), Room 7 (Egyptian), Room 8 (Silenus) and the Portico.
- First floor. Room 9 (Dido), Room 10 (Hercules), Room 11 (Ferrarese painting), Room 12 (Bacchantes), Room 13 (Fame), Room 14 (Lanfranco’s Loggia), Room 15 (Aurora), Room 16 (Flora), Room 17 (Count of Angers), Room 18 (Jupiter and Antiope), Room 19 (Helen and Paris) and Room 20 (Psyche).
Do not assume that the sculptures are all downstairs and the paintings all upstairs. That was the layout in Karl Baedeker’s 1909 handbook (Central Italy and Rome, 15th edition, p. 218), but the catalogue today puts Caravaggio’s paintings in Room 8 on the ground floor, while Titian and Antonello are in Room 20 on the first floor. The museum’s own description of the collection does not divide it by floor.
The sculptures of Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini worked for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and five of his best-known works are on the ground floor. Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius (1619, Room 6) is his first large sculptural group for Scipione. Its subject ties the passage of power from Troy to Rome to the papacy and to the cardinal. The Rape of Proserpina (1621 to 1622, Room 4) shows Pluto dragging Proserpina to the underworld. Scipione commissioned it, it passed to the Ludovisi family, and the State bought it in 1908.
David (1623 to 1624, Room 2) catches the moment before the stone is thrown, with armour and a lyre ending in an eagle’s head at his feet, a reminder of the Borghese family. Apollo and Daphne (1622 to 1625, Room 3) shows the instant when Daphne turns into a laurel, a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Truth (1646 to 1652, Room 6) was made by Bernini for himself in a difficult period, and it was meant to be part of a group with Time that was never finished. The museum’s title is La Verità (Truth), not the “Truth Unveiled” that you may read elsewhere.
Canova’s Pauline Borghese
Antonio Canova’s Pauline Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (1804 to 1808, Room 1) shows Napoleon’s sister reclining as Venus with the golden apple. The couch conceals a mechanism for turning the figure. The work was commissioned by Camillo Borghese, her husband.
Caravaggio in Room 8
The museum’s catalogue lists five Caravaggio paintings in Room 8 as on view.
- Boy with a Basket of Fruit (about 1595). He painted it while working in the workshop of Giuseppe Cesari. It was seized from Cesari in 1607 and given to Scipione.
- Madonna dei Palafrenieri (1605). The confraternity of the papal grooms commissioned it, it was removed in 1606 and Scipione bought it.
- Saint Jerome (about 1606). The old saint is absorbed in study, with a skull on the book that sets life against death.
- David with the Head of Goliath (1606 to 1607 or 1609 to 1610). It was probably painted in Naples during his exile, and the head of Goliath has the artist’s own face. It was perhaps sent to Scipione to ask for a papal pardon. A different David with the Head of Goliath, by Battistello Caracciolo, hangs in the Room of David.
- Saint John the Baptist (1609 to 1610). It travelled by sea in 1610 as a gift to Scipione, in the hope of a pardon, and has been in the collection since 1611.
Titian, Raphael and Antonello
On the first floor, Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love (1515 to 1516, Room 20) shows two similar women on the sides of a sarcophagus. It has been read as an allegory, and scholars today also see it as a celebration of the ideal bride. Baedeker (1909, p. 221) writes that Titian’s “so-called Earthly and Heavenly Love … is one of those creations that produce an indelible impression on the beholder.”
Raphael’s Deposition (1507, Room 9) is an altarpiece made for the chapel of Atalanta Baglioni in Perugia, and it entered the Borghese collection in 1608. Antonello da Messina’s Portrait of a Man (about 1476, Room 20) shows a man in a red garment and a black cap, typical of Venetian patricians, and is tied to the artist’s Venetian stay of 1475 to 1476.
What may not be on view
Rooms and displays change. The online catalogue records Correggio’s Danae (Room 10) and Caravaggio’s Self-Portrait as Bacchus, known as the Sick Bacchus (Room 8), as not currently on display, so do not count on seeing them. The museum also has a temporary exhibition, “Titian. Dialogues between Sacred and Profane”, from 20 October to 8 December 2026. Temporary exhibitions are part of the permanent route and are included in a single ticket, although the museum says the price may change. More than 260 paintings are kept in the Depositi above the picture rooms, but visits to them are suspended.
How can I use 2 hours?
The museum says the visit lasts 2 hours and that leaving at the end of the slot is compulsory. In the 17:45 slot you have 1 hour 15 minutes. We found no itinerary proposed by the museum, and we do not invent one. Our own suggestion, which is not the museum’s: choose a few rooms or works before you enter, note their room numbers and check them on the museum’s site, because you cannot stay longer than your slot. See our tickets guide for the slots and the official prices.
