Day 9: Galleria & Villa Borghese

We started out our day with an English tour of Galleria Borghese.

Galleria Borghese is an art museum which is in the Borghese family's country estate from the late 1500's

The Borghese family collected art works from the late 1500's and early 1600's and housed their treasurers in the estate. In addition to the house, there are beautiful gardens and they used to keep exotic birds, animals, plants and flowers on the grounds as well. We saw many marble statues made by Bernini in his early twenties and paintings by Raphael done around the same time. The Bernini sculptures showed a new way of thinking about marble statues, these had facial expressions and the bodies showed movement and drew the viewer in. Before this time all marble statues were very stately, centered over the base with expressionless faces and the figures appeared to be standing still in a posed stance.

The Bernini statues showed action and emotion and were not centered on their base (like a statue of David with his weight shifted forward on one foot apparently ready to strike with his sling).

These were elements in marble sculpture that had never been seen before! Another sculpture shows a Borghese princess, Paulina, a contemporary women of the time, lounging on a couch naked, what a scandal! People were in a tizy about it.

The Borghese family really thought outside of the box. A painting they purchased for their collection that the Vatican rejected, showed Jesus stepping on a snake with a look of disgust or fear on his face and Mary's mother in the same painting looking old and weathered. People were used to seeing only depictions of beauty and grace from these figures, not every day looking depictions, so the Vatican refused the commission, but the Borghese's bought it and displayed it for all to see.
The Borghese villa was purchased by Rome in the 1800's and has been a public museum and the grounds a public park ever since.

After our museum tour we had lunch in the museum cafe. We had the requsite serving of espresso and some delicious Italian sandwiches.


We also picked up a few things in the gift shop and enjoyed browsing around.

After our lunch we headed out into Villa Borghese park. It was a clear sunny day, so a great day to be there. The kids played for a while



and then Mom and Mitch took off for a nice run through the park. A great place for a run on our last day in Rome! Aunt Beth, Aunt Molly, Ben, Jake and Charlotte headed back over to Trevi Fountain for a daytime view of it since we had seen it on a night walking tour the first time we went there.



We all met back at the apartment for some lunch and a bit of a rest after our morning adventures.

We are heading home tomorrow. We decided to start in packing and cleaning up the apartment because we are getting picked up for the airport at 7am-ugh! We will be in airports and on planes until 9:30pm,so we have a long day of traveling ahead of us.

We've had a wonderful trip to Rome. Seen so many sights and had so much fun, it is sad to leave our adventures behind but we will be glad to get home and see our families too!

Arrivederci Roma!