Our second full day in Rome, we had a morning tour booked with Marco for the "Galleria Borghese":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleria_Borghese. The prospect of going to the Villa Borghese was what prompted us to get a guide in the first place, because when I went to the site to get a reservation (only a certain amount of people are allowed to enter so you have to get your reservation ahead of time) I realized that the Villa Borghese is like the Met: it helps to be led through by someone that knows what they're doing.
And I was right. Marco was an excellent guide and could talk for quite some time about all the art pieces in the museum.
The Villa Borghese is most known for its Bernini statues. It's preposterous to try to describe what they look like. All pictures that I've seen of the statues fail miserably at capturing them. The problem is that the sculptures are three dimensional. As you walk around the statues, the story of the characters is told, the statues seem to move, and you marvel at all of Bernini's intricacies.
The grand highlight is, of course, the statue of "Apollo pursuing Daphne":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_and_Daphne_(Bernini). Don't even look at the pictures. Just go to Rome and see the statue for yourself.
In the Galeria Borghese, they were also some beautiful Caravaggio paintings and I found new appreciation for.
After the Galeria, we toured the gardens. They are called the "Heart of Rome" because the gardens are roughly in the shape of a heart. Awwww.
If you look at the photos on this page, notice on the "Papal Emblem" photo, there are three heads of blinded slaves on the emblem. I have no idea what the whole story is behind that. Our guide didn't know.
And we stumbled across a statue of a very spaghetti western looking figure. Our guide told us the story on that one, but I have since forgotten it. I like to think that it was a statue dedicated to "Ennio Morricone":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennio_Morricone.
