Galleria Borghese

Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, spent the early 1600s assembling what became one of the most important private art collections in Europe, and built this pleasure villa on the edge of Rome specifically to display it. He was also Caravaggio's most important patron and protector — sheltering the artist during his years as a fugitive — which is why the Borghese holds six Caravaggios, more than almost anywhere else in the world.

The collection's real showstoppers are Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculptures, made for Scipione Borghese while the artist was still in his twenties. Apollo and Daphne captures the exact instant a fleeing nymph turns into a laurel tree, her fingers already sprouting leaves in marble that somehow reads as soft. The Rape of Proserpina shows Pluto's fingers pressing into Proserpina's marble thigh with a physical plausibility that still startles first-time viewers. David, mid-windup with his sling, has Bernini's own furious, concentrating face.