One of the most interesting art collections in Rome, among the most beautiful in the world, is housed in the Borghese. The building, situated in the heart of Rome, is a sumptuous seventeenth-century villa inspired by ancient patrician residences, designed by the architect Flaminio Ponzio and finished by Vasanzio, in the splendid public park of the Villa Borghese. For the most part made up of rich collections of sculpture and paintings put together in the seventeenth century by cardinal Scipione Borghese, the powerful nephew of Pope Paul V, the Museum and Gallery, also containing the collections of cardinal Salviati and Lucrezia d'Este, together with those of Prince Camillo Borghese, were enriched in successive centuries thanks to new acquisitions, above all archaeological material. Among the extraordinary complex of works - state property since 1902 - laid out in 20 spacious and admirably decorated rooms, are the Apollo and Daphne, Pluto and Proserpine, David, and Aeneas and Anchises, sculptural masterpieces by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the marble portrait of Paolina Bonaparte Borghese as victorious Venus, the celebrated work of Antonio Canova, and, among the superb, extensive collection of paintings, the Boy with a basket of fruit, the Madonna dei Palafrenieri and the St. Jerome by Caravaggio, the 1507 Deposition of Christ, by Raphael, the Danae, the Correggio masterpiece, depicting one of the four stories of Ovid's Metamorphosis, the famous painting by titian of Sacred and Profane Love, recently restored, as well as canvases by Pinturicchio, Perugino, Lorenzo Lotto, Antonello da Messina, Pietro da Cortona, Giorgione and Veronese. In the Lanfranco hall are the remarkably interesting works of Guido Reni and Francesco Albani, the decoration of the Portico which, conceived by the architect Luigi Canina as a charming group of ancient works of art, contains fine statues, relief work and sculptural fragments from the Roman age and, in the Egyptian room, one of the most atmospheric in the gallery, valuable pieces of ancient art.