The insider's guide to the world's best art museums

What is your favourite art museum? The Louvre? MoMa? Sean Newsom asked six artists, curators and critics which gallery draws them back time and time again

Sean Newsom


WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK
Borghese Gallery, Rome
Januszczak is chief art critic of The Sunday Times
When you have tramped through as many museums as I have, a special place opens up in your heart for the small ones. Don’t get me wrong. The endless joys of the Louvre, in Paris, or the Hermitage, in St Petersburg, are catalogued fondly in my memories. But with mega-museums, you need to be picky. Stick to a plan. Otherwise they will have you cursing all the endless corridors of art that stand between you and a glass of cold, sparkling white.
Give me a small museum every time, preferably one somewhere distinctive and fascinating, packed with masterpieces, yes, but also with quirky little things waiting to be discovered. When I crave that fabulous floaty feeling that you get when great art is really working on you — which is what we’re talking about, right? — I set off for Rome, where I pedal up to the Borghese Gallery.

The Borghese is set in a park north of Piazza del Popolo. Which is where the pedalling comes in. There are various ways to get there — walking is wonderful, too — but hiring one of the creaky pedal vehicles on offer at the kiosk by the fountain leads to a tangible quickening of the pulse.

The gallery, housed inside a gorgeous 17th-century villa, was built by a scoundrel called Scipione Borghese, a powerful Vatican cardinal who used every underhand method in the Italian repertoire to enlarge his collection — particularly of paintings by Caravaggio. He would tell any churches that had commissioned works from Caravaggio that the results were inappropriate and should be rejected. He would then buy up the unwanted pictures extra-cheap.
Bernini’s best sculpture is also displayed here, in a suite of stupendously expensive marble-clad rooms packed with Greek and Roman art. When I had the good fortune to film in here for my series on baroque art, I came to the conclusion that the part of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne in which Daphne’s naked body turns into a tree is probably the most sensitive bit of carving ever.
Because this was originally a private collection, everything is mixed up in an excellently adventurous way. Upstairs, you’ll find Raphael’s sizzling portrait of his mistress, La Fornarina, with whose image Picasso would later have such naughty fun. Then there are the Titians. Even by the standards of the Renaissance, surely Titian’s allegory of Sacred and Profane Love — the most celebrated picture in the collection — is as close to perfection as a painting can be.
When it comes to staying the night, I try to get a room at the Astrid Hotel (00 39 06 32 36 371, astridhotelrome.it , doubles from £110, room-only), in Flaminio. It’s a drive from the centre, but that means it’s quiet enough to get some sleep — a rarity in Rome. The breakfast is on a terrace overlooking the whole caboodle: the river, St Peter’s, the Castel Sant’Angelo. You get a breeze up there, too, which ruffles your hair as it cools your macchiato.

Plan your trip: fly to Rome with British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com ), EasyJet (easyjet.com ), Ryanair (0871 246 0000, ryanair.com ) or Aer Lingus (0818 365000, aerlingus.com). The Borghese Gallery (00 39 06 841 3979, galleriaborghese.it ; £7.50) is open Tuesday to Sunday, 8.30am-7.30pm.

Januszczak’s TV series Baroque! begins on Wednesday on BBC4

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