Day 66: Worth the Wait

Today was very straight forward. My reservation for Galleria Borghese wasn't until 1:00, and I didn't have any other plans for the day so I took a meandering route there and had an early lunch along the way. I actually found a real entrance to the park this time, as opposed to dodging across a highway, hopping a fence and climbing a wall that I had to do yesterday. I got to the Galleria around 11:30, but it was another sunny day so I was happy to hang out in the park and enjoy the day. On the way in I encountered an accordian busker who I had also seen/heard yesterday. I'm not generally much of an accordian enthusiast, and to be honest most accordian buskers are terribble, but this guy was amazing both times - playing complicated classical pieces. This time he was playing my absolute favourite classical piece - Vivaldi's l'estate presto - and I swear it sounded better than on violin. I'm normally pretty stingy with buskers, but I felt I had to give some for this guy.

Accordian, who knew!

I paid extra to get one of the audio tour gadgets and finally began my much anticipated visit. Now, I hope I'm not overreacting, and I'll see how I feel in a few days when the euphoria has faded (and after I've seen the Vatican gallery to compare it to) but I'm pretty sure Galleria Borghese is my favourite gallery I've been to so far. Better than the Rijk gallery, better than Ufizi, and yes, better than the Louvre. It's not that it's a huge gallery - the Louvre dwarfs it in size and number of works, but for my tastes at least Borghese is almost perfect content and each room was spectacular. In the Louvre it's like walking through hall after hall to get to a few great pieces, and I felt that there were great pieces everywhere at Borghese.

A little background into the collection might help. Scipione Borghese was a nephew of Pope Paul V, and when he took the was elected to the papacy he made Scipione a cardinal, and soon gave him the powerful position of Cardinal Nephew. He was a great lover of art, and used the nearly limitless wealth of his position to buy pieces, and the power that came along with it to steal, blackmail and confiscate art that he admired. With all the religious ties you'd think most of the art would have religious content, but Scipione loved classical art and was a big fan of Greek and Roman artwork and mythology. His focus on pagan gods and nude figures was apparently pretty scandalous with his peers, but he had the power and support to get away with it. The collection started being put together in the early 1600s, and unusually he kept it open to the public - very rare in those days. His descendents added to the collection and many of the pieces have gone through restoration over the years.

The gems of the collection are sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Despite loving sculpture, I don't really have much history in it, and I wasn't aware of any of these sculptures until I was in Florence. Now, 2 or 3 of them are in my top 10 favourites - possibly even the top 5. Photos weren't allowed, but it's too hard to communicate his sculpture with a picture anyway. They are so much more dynamic than classical sculpture, with figures twisting so that each step you take around it reveals new details. The detail and creative structuring to avoid ugly braces makes parts of them look so delicate and lifelike. Here are pictures of two - 'Apollo and Daphne' and 'David', but again, the real thing is so much better.

I'm sure for most people it wouldn't be as exciting as it was for me, but I think it's definitely worth the price for anybody visiting Rome.
On my way back through the park I spotted some more interesting birds, so more animal pictures! I'll throw in the hostel cat to round off my image limit.