Discover Galleria Doria Pamphilj

The Galleria Doria Pamphilj is a large private art collection in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, between Via del Corso and Via della Gatta, with its principal entrance on the Corso. Both palace and collection are still owned by the princely Roman family Doria Pamphilj, and the palace is likely the largest in Rome still in private ownership.

The collection has been assembled since the sixteenth century by the Doria, Pamphilj, Landi and Aldobrandini families, united over time by marriage and descent under the simplified surname. Much of it came from Innocent X's Palazzo Pamphilj on Piazza Navona; he left it to his nephew Camillo Pamphilj. With some earlier and later exceptions the bulk is sixteenth- and seventeenth-century work, a high proportion of it of exceptional quality.

Its masterpiece is Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X — the pope who, as Cardinal Giovan Battista Pamphilj, had been the family's own. Velázquez does not idealise the face and is not unflattering either. Since 1927 the painting has been shown in a specially designated small room together with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpted bust of the same man.

The main collection is displayed in the state rooms, and tours of them often end in concerts of Baroque and Renaissance music.

The Galleria Doria Pamphilj is a large private art collection in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, between Via del Corso and Via della Gatta, with its principal entrance on the Corso. Both palace and collection are still owned by the princely Roman family Doria Pamphilj, and the palace is likely the largest in Rome still in private ownership.

The collection has been assembled since the sixteenth century by the Doria, Pamphilj, Landi and Aldobrandini families, united over time by marriage and descent under the simplified surname. Much of it came from Innocent X's Palazzo Pamphilj on Piazza Navona; he left it to his nephew Camillo Pamphilj. With some earlier and later exceptions the bulk is sixteenth- and seventeenth-century work, a high proportion of it of exceptional quality.

Its masterpiece is Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X — the pope who, as Cardinal Giovan Battista Pamphilj, had been the family's own. Velázquez does not idealise the face and is not unflattering either. Since 1927 the painting has been shown in a specially designated small room together with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpted bust of the same man.

The main collection is displayed in the state rooms, and tours of them often end in concerts of Baroque and Renaissance music.

It is a house, not a museum, and that is the point. The Palazzo Doria Pamphilj runs between Via del Corso and Via della Gatta, its Corso facade adjacent to the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata. It has grown over the centuries by accumulation — palaces arriving through marriage, wings added to wings — and is likely the largest palace in Rome still in private ownership.

The interiors are eighteenth-century, the paintings mostly older. Work carried out around the 1767 Savoy marriage, supervised by the Trapani architect Francesco Nicoletti, gave the state rooms much of their present character. So a visitor walks Settecento rooms hung with Cinquecento and Seicento pictures — the reverse of the usual museum arrangement, where the building is older than its contents.

The hang is historic rather than curatorial. Paintings are stacked frame to frame, several deep, above antique Roman busts and statuary on pedestals. Nothing is spaced for contemplation and the labelling is minimal. This is how a private collection looked before public galleries taught everyone to hang at eye level with a metre of wall between works, and it is the strongest argument for taking the audioguide.

The Galleria degli Specchi is the set piece. The second gallery, lined with mirrors, holds the Velázquez and Bernini portraits, antique Roman statues and Antonio Tempesta's Crossing of the Red Sea. Off it are the salette — del Seicento, del Cinquecento, del Quattrocento — each holding a century.

The collection was built by marriage, which is why it is four collections. From the sixteenth century onward the Doria, Pamphilj, Landi and Aldobrandini families each assembled paintings, furniture and statuary, and those families were then united through marriage and descent under the simplified surname Doria Pamphilj. The result is not a collection with a taste but a collection with a genealogy.

The largest single inheritance came from a pope. Cardinal Giovan Battista Pamphilj became Innocent X in 1644, and the paintings and furnishings of his Palazzo Pamphilj on Piazza Navona passed to his nephew Camillo Pamphilj. Camillo then did something a Roman nephew was not supposed to do: defying his mother Olimpia Maidalchini — the pope's sister-in-law, confidante and adviser — he renounced the cardinalship his uncle had conferred on him and married the widowed Olimpia Borghese, born an Aldobrandini. She brought the Palazzo Aldobrandini with her.

The building grew the same way the collection did. The palace has expanded over centuries by absorbing what arrived, which is how it became probably the largest in Rome still privately owned. It runs a whole block, from Via del Corso through to Via della Gatta, with its Corso front sitting against the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata.

The rooms a visitor walks are eighteenth-century. Around the 1767 marriage of a Doria Pamphilj Landi to Princess Leopoldina Maria of Savoy, daughter of Louis Victor, Prince of Carignan, work was carried out under the supervision of Francesco Nicoletti, an architect from Trapani. The state rooms took the form they now have, and the older pictures were rehung into them.

The last change of consequence was to one room, in 1927, when the Velázquez was moved into a small designated space together with Bernini's bust of the same pope. It is the one place in the palace where the display was designed around a single work rather than around the wall it had to fill — and it is where almost every visitor spends the longest.

What day is it closed? Wednesday — not Monday. Also 1 January, Easter and 25 December.

Do I have to book? The gallery's own pages disagree: the visit page says access will not be granted without a reservation, the ticketing page says reservations are recommended and that access cannot be guaranteed without one. Book. It costs one euro more and removes the question.

What does it cost? €16.00 at the ticket office, €17.00 booked online — online is more expensive here. Children under 12 are free, or €1.00 online.

Is the audioguide extra? No. It is included in the entrance ticket, in Italian, English, French and Spanish.

What is the famous painting? Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X. Since 1927 it has been shown in a small room of its own together with Bernini's bust of the same pope.

Is there a Caravaggio? Two: the Penitent Magdalene and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, in the Saletta del Seicento.

Can I see the Secret Apartments? Not on this ticket. The Secret Apartments and the Bath of Diana are managed by the Floridi Doria Pamphilj Trust and must be arranged separately.

Is it accessible? The gallery states that the lift is not available to visitors, and the collection is on the first floor of a private palace. Anyone who cannot manage stairs should telephone +39 06 6797323 before travelling.

Where is the entrance? Via del Corso 305. It used to be on Piazza del Collegio Romano, which is what older guidebooks still say.