Rome 2012 #4 [Villa Borghese & The Spanish Steps]

Villa Borghese is a large landscape garden in the naturalistic English manner in Rome, containing a number of buildings, museums and attractions. It is the second largest public park in Rome (80 hectares). The gardens were developed for the Villa Borghese Pinciana ("Borghese villa on the Pincian Hill"), built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese, who used it as a villa suburbana, a party villa, at the edge of Rome, and to house his art collection. The gardens as they are now were remade in the early 19th century.

The nearest metro station to Villa Borghese. I have the impression that all metro stations in Europe share the same traits - very raw and unkept. Maybe, I've been too accustomed to how every metro station in Singapore look almost like some kind of mini art museum exhibition - clean, sleek and organised that I am here complaining like a pampered child while people in my own country is still complaining about how much our metro system has gone from bad to worse.

Here in Rome is where I saw policemen trying to drag a group of kids no older than 12 years old out of the trains because they are pickpockets and how kind locals were trying their best helping to warn us, the tourists that, "Be careful, they are robbers". This is where you see kindness and the the sad reality of these kids being placed side by side against each other. How their society (in fact, a lot of other societies are in this plight too) is falling apart, when you cannot expect your country to provide you with jobs even when you graduated from universities; where families fall apart because the parents fail to bring food home and when children find it hopeless to go to school and decided to do it their way to make ends meet - to steal. Instead of spending their time in school, they lurked around to jump on any opportunity they can find on gaining every cent in their pocket, orthodox or not. 

Main entrance into Villa Borghese.

The museum inside the garden. I don't have any pictures inside of the museum cos no cameras are allowed.

This is the museum where the famous painting, "Young Woman with Unicorn" is kept.  

Image Source: Wikipedia

A very nice café sitting inside the garden.

In 1605, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of Bernini, began turning this former vineyard into the most extensive gardens built in Rome since Antiquity. The vineyard's site is identified with the gardens of Lucullus, the most famous in the late Roman republic. In the 19th century much of the garden's former formality was remade as a landscape garden in the English taste. 

 

The Spanish Steps lead up to this park, and there is another entrance at the Porte del Popolo by Piazza del Popolo. The Pincio (the Pincian Hill of ancient Rome), in the south part of the park, offers one of the greatest views over Rome. 

The Spanish Steps (Italian: Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti) are a set of steps in Rome, Italy, climbing a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church at the top. The Scalinata is the widest staircase in Europe.

Piazza di Spagna in the background.

The monumental stairway of 138 steps was built with French diplomat Étienne Gueffier’s bequeathed funds of 20,000 scudi, in 1723–1725, linking the Bourbon Spanish Embassy, and the Trinità dei Monti church that was under the patronage of the Bourbon kings of France. 

This huge fountain at the bottom of the Spanish steps. Rome has loads of fountains. You see one at almost every corner.

The Spanish Embassy.