May 21, 2016 - Villa Borghese and Gallery Borghese

We planned to do the walking tour in Villa Borghese which include the visit of Museum of Modern Art in the area.  However, the Hotel Lodi staff highly recommended the MAXXI Museum, therefore we took his advice to see the MAXXI Museum.  We took the subway and tram and found the MAXXI Museum.  Unfortunately, he did not tell us that it is open at 11AM.  We had to wait for about half an hour before we got in the MAXXI Museum.  The main exhibition for the time we visited there was "Superstudio 50" which is an architecture exhibition.  It was very interesting to see the architectures incorporate the sound, light and nature as part of their design which is sort of an art to us.  However, the concept is a little bit over our head.  The MAXXI was designed by Zaha Hadid, who died unexpectedly a few months ago.  She taught at Yale.  MAXXI is a rather famous museum however it does not have much collections. 

Then, we moved to Villa Borghese and wondered around from the Piazza Napoleon toward east to Gallery Borghese.  Villa Borghese is the 2nd largest public park in Rome.  It was Saturday and we saw a lot of Rome families relaxing in this park with their kids riding bicycles, four wheels pedal bikes, and rollerblades.  The garden has a replica of the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre built in 2003 and a free entrance museum Museo Pietro Canonica.  It is a museum based on artist’s houses and consists primarily of works by Pietro Canonica: marbles, bronzes and original models, as well as a large number of sketches, studies and replicas which provide a complete journey through the evolution of this artist’s works.  In addition, it has a little music concert room in there since Pietro Canonica was a musician too.

After Museo Pietro Canonica, we walked to Gallery Borghese to wait for our tour which was booked via Viator Tour.  The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V. Scipione Borghese was an early patron of Bernini and an avid collector of works by Caravaggio. Many Bernini’s sculpture works are in display here. One of  the most impressive piece is the Rape of Proserpina which is a large marble sculpture with realistic effects of carving hard marble to show the texture of the skin of a young girl.  It is unbelievable. It also has the Lady with a Unicorn by Raphael. Our tour guide studied modern art in the University of Rome and is very knowledgable about art works in this gallery.  She provided many interesting interpretations of each piece of art work and allowed us to appreciate these arts in a more in-depth level.  

Gallery Borghese is a small museum compare to the Vatican Museum, therefore they impose a strict rule of limited number of visitors for each 2 hours period.  Once 2 hours is up, they will vacate the whole museum and then will admit another group of limited number of visitors.  It is much less crowded then the Vatican Museum and it is much more enjoyable.

After the tour of the gallery, our tour guide led us to stroll around the Borghese Garden (Villa Borghese).  

After the tour of Borghese, we went to Palazzo del Freddo Giovanni Fassi to try the best and the cheapest gelato in Rome.  It was good and definitely help to end the day with positive notes.