Palazzo Borghese

Roma Capitale dates the beginning to 1560, when Monsignor Tommaso del Giglio commissioned a palazzetto from Vignola; Martino Longhi il Vecchio completed and enlarged it for the Spanish cardinal Pedro Deza; and Cardinal Camillo Borghese, shortly to be Paul V, bought it in 1596, after which work continued under Flaminio Ponzio, then Carlo Maderno, Giovanni Vasanzio and, after 1670, Carlo Rainaldi. The monumental courtyard carries a double order of 96 Doric and Ionic columns, closed at the end by the nymphaeum known as the Bagno di Venere. Much of what hangs in the Galleria Borghese came from this palace; the Galleria itself is outside the rione.