Villa Borghese

The core was already Borghese property in 1580. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Paul V, began building in 1606, giving the works to Flaminio Ponzio and, after Ponzio's death, to the Fleming Giovanni Vasanzio; the villa was completed in 1633. In 1766 Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese commissioned Antonio Asprucci and his son Mario to remodel the casino, the Casino dei giuochi d'acqua and above all the park, where they laid out the Giardino del Lago. In the early nineteenth century Camillo Borghese bought land toward porta del Popolo and porta Pinciana and had Luigi Canina knit it into the whole. The Italian state bought the complex in 1901 and ceded it to the comune of Rome in 1903, for three million lire of the day, so that it would be permanently open to the public; its official name became Villa comunale Umberto I gia Borghese, and Romans went on calling it Villa Borghese. Its own account says the park lies largely in the quartiere Pinciano and in small part in the rione Campo Marzio, divided by the Aurelian Walls. Roma Capitale calls it, in quotation marks of its own, the Parco dei Musei. Two smaller buildings are named on the villa's own lists without a date or an author: the Casina dell'Orologio and the Prospettiva del Teatro on viale Fiorello La Guardia, whose facade is brightly decorated. Roma Capitale's tourism service also lists a puppet theatre among the park's services.