Saturday Night's Alright (For Fine Art)

I've reported recently on some of Roma's lesser-known art museums.  Last night, I went to the art museum in Roma that seems to be everyone's favorite.  Even better, last night was a Notte dei Musei evening in Roma -- a night where all of the state-run museums and sights in the city were open until midnight!  Seeing fabulous fine art on a warm but comfortable late sumer night wound up being perfect.   

The Galleria Borghese is the fine art museum in the Villa Borghese (Rome's Central Park).  The consensus is that, with the possible exception of the Vatican Museum, the Galleria Borghese contains the best collection of art in Roma.  One key difference between the two, however, is that the Galleria Borghese is not nearly as sprawling or agitating as the Museo Vaticani.  The museum takes up a compact 2 floors of a smallish sized villa.  Plus, visitors can only enter at 2-hourly intervals, and you have to order tickets on-line or by phone in advance.  This operates as a crowd control that is the antithesis of the scheme that exists at Museo Vaticani.  The NYT's 36-Hours in Rome states that the Galleria Borghese's "ratio of user-friendliness to artistic significance may be the most optimal in the world."  I'm obviously not qualified to opine on that question.  But I can confirm that the museum is Goldilocks awesome -- not too big, not too crowded, not too hot; it's just right.  

7:45 p.m. on Sabato sera

The only downside to the place is that they do not let you take pictures.  That's really too bad.  The Bernini sculptures -- especially the Rape of Persephone and Apollo and Daphne -- are heavenly.  The room with something like 6 Caravaggio's is unbelievable too.  My fave is his David With the Head of Goliath.  Other highlights are Raphael's The Deposition of Christ, and works by Titian, Botticelli, Rubens, and numerous other artists whose names I cannot remember.