In a city where there’s a lot to see and plenty of history to process, it’s helpful to narrow down which museums to visit. When I was in Rome last summer, I booked a semi-private guided tour of the Borghese Gallery and was glad I added it to my itinerary.

The Borghese Gallery is typically coupled with heavy hitters like the Vatican Museum, Roman Forum, and The Colosseum. In fact, I always recommend visiting the Borghese Gallery in the middle of the trip to take a break from the ruins and to enjoy the park. The museum is full of beautiful paintings and sculptures. Many of the pieces are by the same artists that have artwork dotted around the city.

Keep reading to learn more about my guided Borghese Gallery experience, why I recommend it guided, and how we spent our time at Villa Borghese after. In case you didn’t know, there’s a gorgeous lake where you can rent a boat, and a lot of people don’t know about it.

Table of Contents

• About the Borghese Gallery
• Why I Prefer LivTours
• Meeting Point
• Our Guide, Gaia
• Exploring the Borghese Gallery
• Post-Tour Stroll at Villa Borghese
• Tour Cost + Was It Worth It?
• Kat’s Final Thoughts

About the Borghese Gallery

The museum is housed in the former villa of Cardinal Scipione Borghese who happened to be a nephew of the Pope in the early 1600’s. The Borghese Gallery is a relatively small museum with only 2 floors of artwork housed in 20 rooms. There are famous pieces of art by Bernini, Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, and more making it an excellent museum for Italian art lovers.

The villa is located in a large park with walking paths, a zoo, cafes, ponds, and is overall a great place for a stroll and picnic. Though small, the gallery is still jam packed with artwork. There’s a cap of 360 people in the museum at one time. There’s also a 2 hour visit maximum per ticket. This is one of the reasons I recommend a guide, so you’re efficiently seeing the important pieces without rushing.

When we were there in June, tickets were sold out for the day. This is absolutely a place where you need to purchase tickets in advance, or book a tour that includes tickets already. There is a cafe and bathrooms on the bottom floor of the gallery. There was also air conditioning, but some of the rooms were so crowded that it felt hot anyway.

Why I Prefer LivTours

I mentioned this in my previous blog posts about my evening golf cart tour in Rome and Vatican Tour, which I loved. It’s worth mentioning again why I chose to do this tour with LivTours instead of any other tour operator, because they’re not all the same. I always say that your guides can make or break your experience!

I prefer LivTours because they’re family-owned, offer semi-private options, and have high quality guides. By semi-private, I mean most tours are typically capped at 6 people maximum. This means you can avoid the impersonal feeling of larger group tours, ask your tour guide questions (and hear them better, let’s be real), and not pay as much as a private tour.

Their private tours are great too. There’s nothing like getting personalized attention and being able to customize a tour. If you book a semi-private tour and no one else books your time then you’ll get the tour private by default. For this Borghese Gallery experience, LivTours offers semi-private plus private museum tours and they take care of securing the tickets so all you need to do is show up.

Meeting Point

My husband and I were staying at the Six Senses Rome and took a 10 minute taxi ride to the Villa Borghese Park. We could have walked from our hotel and it would’ve been about 20 minutes, but it was a hot June day. If you can, I’d recommend walking as the path from Six Senses Rome to Villa Borghese passes through the Spanish Steps and it’s a lovely walk.

We met our guide right outside the entrance of the Borghese Gallery. She was holding a sign that said LivTours so we couldn’t miss her. She handed us our headsets which we had to use in this case as the museum was going to be full of people. Once all 6 of our group arrived, we headed inside the museum to drop off our bags and start the tour.

Our Guide, Gaia

Gaia was an expert at the Borghese Gallery, and we could tell she had done this tour many times before. Her personality was bright, and her accent was thick. She handed us our timed-entry tickets and escorted us up the stairs to start the tour. I should note that this specific tour is only offered in the afternoon because the crowds aren’t as crazy compared to earlier in the day, and we appreciated this!

What I liked about Gaia is that she weaved an overarching story of Cardinal Scipione Borghese and his eclectic art collection. She also went in depth about the intriguing story of Caravaggio and Bernini. We had touched on their stories during our evening golf cart tour of Rome, so hearing more about these artists while looking at their artwork felt like coming full circle.

Exploring the Borghese Gallery

I mentioned before that the Borghese Gallery is on the small side, and it definitely felt that way. There were crowds of people standing around popular pieces, and several other (larger) tour groups taking up space. Gaia did a great job of navigating those crowds, making space for our small group, giving us time to observe the pieces before coming together and explaining the story behind the art.

I’m not an art aficionado by any means, but I thoroughly enjoyed the art inside the Borghese Gallery. Some of my favorite pieces included: Lady with Unicorn by Raffaello, Leda by Leonardo da Vinci, Bernini’s self portraits, Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath and Boy with a Basket of Fruit, and those are just the paintings. There were some amazing sculptures by Bernini such as David, Apollo and Daphne, The Rape of Proserpina, and more. One of my favorites was Canova’s Paolina Borghese as Venus Victorious. To get such movement and smooth textures out of marble was incredible to see.

There are also rooms with Roman artifacts, mosaics, frescos, modern exhibitions, and even an Egyptian room. I could’ve easily spent half a day exploring all of the rooms, but alas the ticket time is limited to two hours only. Still, I enjoyed seeing the popular works of art here.

Post-Tour Stroll at Villa Borghese

After our tour finished, our group took a picture with Gaia before we parted ways. Our guide gave us some recommendations for where to walk in the park so we could take in the sights and reflect on all we have seen and learned. The Villa Borghese park is huge, and you can even rent bikes to get around. There are plenty of paved paths lined with vibrant trees. This park was a beautiful respite from the chaos of the city.

There are over 90 markers on the public park map. My husband and I walked past the zoo toward the lake. It was a leisurely 10 minute walk until we reached the Viale di Lago where we saw a pond and a stand renting out row boats. We debated renting one for a while, but ultimately decided to conserve our energy for the walk back to our hotel. Still, it was wonderful seeing young couples and families on their row boats exploring the pond. I highly recommend doing this during your visit!

For the more practical travelers, it may please you to know there are sit down cafes and places for an afternoon aperitivo. You can also use their bathrooms, but make sure to bring a few Euro coins with you. My husband and I walked through the park towards the Spanish Steps and admired the view of the city. We walked down Via del Corso and did some window shopping before reaching our hotel feeling tired yet satisfied.

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Tour Cost + Was It Worth It?

Here’s the thing, you could just buy Borghese Gallery tickets for 20 EUR a pop. The tickets are released around 45 days in advance and they go quickly, so you’ll need to keep track of that. If you’re comfortable navigating crowded museums and doing your research beforehand to know which rooms to visit, go for it! I personally recommend a guided tour because I don’t have to buy the tickets or wait in line, I don’t have to do any research prior, and the guide gives additional rich context to the pieces I’m seeing. That to me makes it worth it.

This specific semi-private tour with LivTours cost 119 EUR (~$140 USD) per person and included the tickets and service of a guide. We would’ve been completely lost and overwhelmed without the guide. Especially because the lighting in this museum isn’t the best (we found that the lighting caused distracting glares on some of the darker paintings), the guide was still able to point out things we weren’t able to see clearly.

Our group was made up of 3 adult couples, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this tour for a family whose kids are interested in art. The guides are well-versed in working with kids and making the stories more digestible for younger audiences. Generally, I would recommend a private tour when it comes to family touring because then the guide can completely customize the tour for the family and come prepared with scavenger hunts and puzzles for the kids.

Kat’s Final Thoughts

This Borghese Gallery tour was one of many LivTours I took while in Rome last summer, and it was one of the most memorable. The museum itself was great, and we found that 2 hours was the perfect timing to keep from getting overwhelmed. As I look back on the pictures and videos I took on my phone, I can see how much my husband and I were both admiring the art and commenting on how silly some of the art styles were. We had a great time, and that was due in part to our guide who made the art make sense to us.

I highly recommend checking out the park after visiting the museum. Even if you don’t visit the museum, the park is worth going to if you enjoy nature and need to take a beat. My husband and I will definitely be back the next time!