All six Caravaggios are in Room VIII
The last room on the ground floor, the Sala del Sileno. Not scattered through the building — one room, six paintings, spanning his whole career.
Decide before you arrive, not during
This is what's in every room
Twenty numbered rooms across two floors, plus the entrance hall. Sculpture and antiquities downstairs, the picture gallery above.
You get two hours. The clock starts at your entry time, the staff clear the rooms at the end, and the single most common regret is discovering the upstairs picture gallery with fifteen minutes left.
This is what's in every room, so you can decide before you arrive rather than during: where each Bernini stands, which room holds all six Caravaggios, what survived the sale to Napoleon and what didn't, and a workable plan for splitting two hours across two floors.
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Borghese Gallery Skip-the-Line Tickets with Audioguide
$46 · 4.6★ (2,705 reviews) · 2 – 4 hrs · An escorted entrance and an audio guide, so you can work the rooms in your own order
The five facts worth memorising
If you remember nothing else, remember where these five things are
Bernini's four great marble groups are in Rooms II, III, IV and VI
David in Room II, Apollo and Daphne in Room III, the Rape of Proserpina in Room IV, and Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius in Room VI.
Canova's Paolina Borghese is in Room I
The first room you enter. You will walk into her before you have finished adjusting to the building.
Bernini's portrait busts and self-portraits are upstairs in Room XIV
Not with his sculptures. This is the most-missed room in the museum, and it is the best single reason to go up.
Titian's Sacred and Profane Love is in Room XX
The last room of the picture gallery — which means the walk to it takes you through the whole Pinacoteca.
Two floors, one loop each
How the museum is organised
Twenty numbered rooms across two floors, plus the entrance hall.
- Ground floor (Rooms I–VIII) — sculpture and antiquities. Bernini, Canova, Caravaggio, and the ancient marbles.
- Upper floor (Rooms IX–XX) — the Pinacoteca, or picture gallery. Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Rubens, Bellini.
Above that are storerooms holding more than 260 further paintings. Public visits to the storerooms are currently suspended — don't plan a trip around them.
One naming quirk to expect: the picture gallery is called both the "first floor" and the "second floor" depending on which source you read. It's the same upstairs floor either way.
Why the rooms have odd names
Several rooms are named after sculptures that aren't there any more.
The villa was built as a display case — designed by Flaminio Ponzio from Cardinal Scipione Borghese's own ideas, finished after Ponzio's death by the Flemish architect Giovanni Vasanzio, and never lived in. In the 1770s and 80s, Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese had the whole interior redecorated by the architect Antonio Asprucci, who gave each room a theme, a matching ceiling fresco and a centrepiece sculpture. Most of those themes come from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is why the 2026 exhibition on that subject fits the building so naturally.
Then in 1807–08, under financial and family pressure from Napoleon — his brother-in-law — Camillo Borghese sold the collection's antiquities to France. Estimates of the scale vary from around 344 catalogued pieces to nearly 700 in total. They now anchor the Louvre's Roman holdings.
So Room V is the Hermaphrodite Room, Room VI is the Gladiator Room and Room VIII is the Silenus Room, and all three namesakes are in Paris.
Rooms I–VIII, plus the Salone
Ground floor, room by room
Sculpture and antiquities. This is where the crowds pool, and it is where most visitors fall hardest for the Borghese.
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Entrance Salone (Salone di Mariano Rossi)
The grand hall you walk into.
- Ceiling: Mariano Rossi's enormous trompe-l'œil fresco (1775–79), showing Romulus received into Olympus.
- Floor: the Gladiator Mosaic — five large and two smaller panels of gladiatorial combat and animal hunts, early 4th century AD, found on the Borghese estate at Torrenova in 1834 and installed here by 1839. Look for the Greek letter Θ (theta) beside individual fighters: it marks the ones who died.
- High on the far wall: Pietro Bernini's relief of Marcus Curtius leaping into the chasm — the ancient horse (2nd century AD) completed with a rider carved in 1618.
- Also the busts of the Twelve Caesars, and a colossal Fighting Satyr (120–140 AD) said to have influenced Bernini's David.
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Room I — Sala della Paolina
Antonio Canova, Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (1805–08).
Napoleon's sister, semi-nude on a marble couch, holding the apple of the Judgment of Paris. She married Prince Camillo Borghese in 1803. The statue has only stood in this room since 1889.
Ceiling: Stories of Venus and Aeneas by Domenico de Angelis (1779).
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Room II — Sala del Sole
Bernini, David (1623–24).
Carved in roughly seven months when Bernini was twenty-four, mid-throw rather than mid-decision. The face is traditionally a self-portrait.
Ceiling: The Fall of Phaeton by Francesco Caccianiga.
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Room III — Sala di Apollo e Dafne
Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (1622–25).
In this room since 1625, and placed at the centre so you can circle it. The foliage was largely carved by his assistant Giuliano Finelli.
Also Dosso Dossi's own Apollo and Daphne and his Melissa. Ceiling by Pietro Angeletti, room designed by Asprucci 1780–85.
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Room IV — Sala degli Imperatori
Bernini, The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22) — his first fully autograph large group, at the centre of the most opulent room in the building.
Named for the eighteen porphyry and alabaster busts of Roman emperors set around the walls in the early 1800s. Also the Borghese-type Artemis (120–130 AD) and four marble "Four Seasons" vases (1785).
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Room V — Sala dell'Ermafrodito
The Sleeping Hermaphroditus. The original — which Bernini restored in 1620, adding the famous mattress — went to Napoleon in 1807 and is in the Louvre.
What you see is a second Roman copy in Parian marble, restored by Andrea Bergondi, who copied Bernini's mattress.
Floor: ancient fishing-scene mosaics from Castellarcione. Walls: landscapes by Paul Bril.
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Room VI — Sala del Gladiatore
Two Berninis, at opposite ends of his life:
- Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius (1618–19), carved at about twenty with his father Pietro.
- Truth Unveiled by Time (c. 1647–48), the uncommissioned personal work he began after the St Peter's bell-tower disaster, left unfinished — the figure of Time was never carved.
Named for the Borghese Gladiator, sold to Napoleon and removed in 1808.
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Room VII — Sala Egizia
Asprucci's Egyptian-themed room (1779–82), an early example of European Egyptomania. Ceiling by Tommaso Maria Conca showing the Nile, the planetary gods, and Antony and Cleopatra. Egyptian, Oriental and Greek statuary, including a Satyr on a Dolphin and a Priestess of Isis.
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Room VIII — Sala del Sileno
The Caravaggio room. All six.
Painting Date Boy with a Basket of Fruit c. 1593–95 Self-Portrait as Bacchus ("Sick Bacchus") c. 1593–95 Saint Jerome Writing c. 1605–06 Madonna and Child with St Anne ("Madonna dei Palafrenieri") 1605–06 Saint John the Baptist c. 1609–10 David with the Head of Goliath c. 1609–10 Two of these have stories worth knowing before you stand in front of them.
The Madonna dei Palafrenieri was painted for an altar in St Peter's and removed within weeks, in April 1606 — too much realism, not enough decorum. Scipione Borghese bought the rejected altarpiece for 100 scudi.
David with the Head of Goliath was painted in exile, after Caravaggio killed a man in 1606 and fled Rome under a death sentence. The severed head is his own face. The sword carries the abbreviated motto humilitas occidit superbiam — humility kills pride. He is thought to have sent it to Scipione, the pope's nephew, as a plea for pardon. He died before it could be granted.
The lighting in here is deliberately low. Give your eyes a moment.
Related reading: Caravaggio in Rome — every painting and where to find it maps all of them across the city, including the six you can see free in churches.
Rooms IX–XX
Upper floor: the Pinacoteca
Reinstalled after the recent renovation, so some older guides describe a different hang.
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Room IX — Sala di Didone
The Raphael room. His Deposition (1507), Lady with a Unicorn (c. 1506) and a Portrait of a Man. Also Perugino, Fra Bartolomeo's Adoration (1495), Botticelli, and Pinturicchio's Crucifixion (1473) — the oldest work in the collection. Ceiling by Anton von Maron.
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Room X — Sala di Ercole
Correggio's Danaë (1530–31) above the fireplace, bought by Prince Camillo in Paris in 1827. Also Brescianino's Venus with Two Cherubs, Niccolò dell'Abate's Deer Hunt, and Nicolas Cordier's Gypsy Girl at the centre. Ceiling: the Labours of Hercules (1784).
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Room XI
Sixteenth-century northern Italy: Lorenzo Lotto (including a self-portrait), Savoldo, Dosso Dossi.
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Rooms XII–XIV — the Lanfranco Gallery
Room XIV is named for Giovanni Lanfranco's vault fresco, the Council of the Gods (1624–25), and it is where the rest of the Bernini material lives:
- The two busts of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1632) — the first with the flaw in the marble, and the replacement he carved at speed
- The bust of Pope Paul V
- The Goat Amalthea, attributed to him as a teenager
- The terracotta model for the equestrian Louis XIV
- Two painted self-portraits — as a young man (c. 1623) and in maturity (c. 1635)
Most visitors never find this room. It's the single best reason to go upstairs.
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Room XV
Jacopo Bassano's Last Supper and Adoration of the Kings; Palma il Giovane's Fall of Lucifer; Algardi's Sleep.
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Room XVI
More Bassano and Venetian work.
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Rooms XVII–XVIII
Rubens — the Deposition and Susanna and the Elders — with Scarsellino.
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Room XIX
Domenichino's large Hunt of Diana, and Francesco Albani.
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Room XX — Sala di Psiche
The Venetian finale. Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (c. 1514), plus his Venus Blindfolding Cupid; Antonello da Messina's Portrait of a Man; Giovanni Bellini's Madonna and Child; Veronese; Carpaccio.
The clock starts at your entry time
How to spend your two hours
The rooms run in a loop on each floor, so the real decision is which floor to do first.
If you can choose, start on the ground floor. The Bernini rooms and the single-room Caravaggio bottleneck are where crowds pool, and you want them at the top of your hour before the next cohort arrives. Staff often direct arrivals upstairs to spread the flow — if that happens, move through the Pinacoteca briskly and come down.
A workable split:
| Time | Where |
|---|---|
| 45 min | Rooms I–VI (Canova, the four Berninis) |
| 30 min | Room VIII (the Caravaggios) |
| 40 min | Rooms IX, X, XIV, XX upstairs |
| 5 min | Buffer — the staff clear rooms before the hour |
If you only have one hour: Room III, Room IV, Room II, Room I, then Room VIII. That's Apollo and Daphne, Proserpina, David, Paolina and all six Caravaggios. Go up only if time remains, and go straight to Rooms IX and XX.
- A bell rings at around one hour fifty, and staff begin clearing at one fifty-five. You will be outside at two hours. The café and bookshop are more relaxed, so most people's visit runs closer to two and a half hours in total.
- Photography is allowed without flash. No tripods, no selfie sticks. Large bags go in the compulsory cloakroom.
- There's an official app with an audio guide and a geolocated interior map, and audio guides rent for a few euros at a desk beside the ticket office.
Related reading: our guide to opening hours, entry slots and closing days covers which slot to book and what the two-hour rule means in practice.
Since the renovation
What's different in 2026
The Pinacoteca has fully reopened. The upper floor closed in stages from March 2024 for a major renovation — wall hangings, window fixtures, lighting, canvas restoration — during which about fifty paintings were displayed at Palazzo Barberini. The museum stayed open throughout, keeping the ground-floor Bernini and Caravaggio rooms accessible. The loans have returned and the picture gallery is shown in a new arrangement.
Metamorfosi: Ovid and the Arts runs 23 June to 20 September 2026, staged with the Rijksmuseum, which hosted the first leg earlier in the year. More than eighty works are woven through the villa around Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and Rape of Proserpina — so it supplements the permanent collection rather than replacing it, but expect the route and some room arrangements to be adjusted while it runs.
Two hours goes quickly
Know the rooms before you arrive, and book early
Slots are capped at 180 people and sell out weeks ahead.
Would rather someone else set the room order?
Borghese Gallery Guided Tour with Skip-the-Line Entry
A two-hour slot is exactly the length of this tour, which is the point: a live guide fixes the route through Rooms I–VIII and the Pinacoteca so you are not the person still working out the floor plan at minute forty. It's the highest-rated option on this site on a meaningful review base.
Or set your own pace through the rooms
Two more ways into the same twenty rooms
Every option here puts you in front of the same collection — the difference is who decides the order, and how long you get to linger in Room VIII.
Decide on the day
Borghese Gallery Ticket + Audioguide or Guided Tour
Pick the audio-guide version or upgrade to a live guide at booking. Useful if you want commentary for the Pinacoteca, where the room numbers matter most, but would rather stand in front of the Caravaggios on your own clock.
The rooms plus the park
Borghese Gallery and Gardens Guided Small-Group Tour
Adds the gardens the villa was designed to sit inside. Worth it if you want Asprucci's redecoration and the Ovidian room themes explained in the setting that produced them, rather than as a floor plan.
Frequently asked questions
The Borghese collection, answered
Where are the Caravaggio paintings in the Galleria Borghese?
All six hang in Room VIII, the Sala del Sileno, the final room on the ground floor: Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Self-Portrait as Bacchus, Saint Jerome Writing, the Madonna dei Palafrenieri, Saint John the Baptist and David with the Head of Goliath.
Which room is Bernini's Apollo and Daphne in?
Room III, the Sala di Apollo e Dafne, where it has stood since 1625. It sits at the centre of the room so visitors can walk around it. Bernini's David is next door in Room II, the Rape of Proserpina in Room IV, and Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius in Room VI.
How many rooms does the Galleria Borghese have?
Twenty numbered rooms plus the entrance Salone. Rooms I to VIII on the ground floor hold the sculpture and antiquities; Rooms IX to XX upstairs form the Pinacoteca, or picture gallery. Storerooms above the Pinacoteca hold more than 260 additional paintings, though public visits to them are currently suspended.
What are the most famous works in the Galleria Borghese?
Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, Rape of Proserpina and David; Canova's Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix; six Caravaggios including David with the Head of Goliath; Titian's Sacred and Profane Love; Raphael's Deposition; and Correggio's Danaë.
Why are Galleria Borghese rooms named after sculptures that aren't there?
Because in 1807–08 Camillo Borghese sold the family's antiquities to Napoleon's France, and they now form part of the Louvre's Roman collection. Room V is still the Hermaphrodite Room, Room VI the Gladiator Room and Room VIII the Silenus Room, though all three namesake sculptures are in Paris.
Where are Bernini's busts of Scipione Borghese?
Upstairs in Room XIV, the Loggia di Lanfranco — not with his marble groups on the ground floor. The room also holds Bernini's bust of Pope Paul V, the attributed Goat Amalthea, a terracotta model for the equestrian Louis XIV, and two of his painted self-portraits.
What should I see if I only have one hour at the Galleria Borghese?
Rooms III, IV, II and I on the ground floor, then Room VIII. That covers Apollo and Daphne, the Rape of Proserpina, David, Canova's Paolina and all six Caravaggios. If time remains, go upstairs to Room IX for Raphael and Room XX for Titian.
Can you take photos inside the Galleria Borghese?
Yes, for personal use and without flash. Tripods, monopods and selfie sticks are not permitted, and large bags must be left in the compulsory cloakroom before entry.