- Title: ITALY: ROME'S FAMOUS BORGHESE GALLERY REOPENS AFTER 13 YEAR CLOSURE
- Date: 17th July 1996
- Summary: 1. SLV/CU/SV EXTERIOR OF VILLA BORGHESE (3 SHOTS) 0.15 2. SLV ROOM WITH GIANLORENZO BERNINI'S SCULPTURE "DAVID" 0.20 3. SV OF PEOPLE LOOKING 0.22 4. CU DETAILS OF "DAVID" (2 SHOTS) 0.29 5. SV/CU OF BERNINI'S SCULPTURE "RAPE OF PROSERPINE" (4 SHOTS) 0.48 6. MCU DOCTOR KRISTINA HERRMANN FIORE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE
- Embargoed: 1st August 1996 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: ROME, ITALY
- City:
- Country: Italy
- Reuters ID: LVABJJYSDATAA1ZE23BDKA04QEY2
- Story Text: Rome's famous Borghese Gallery, one of Italy's richest museums, has reopened after a 13 year closure.
After a decade of bureaucratic red tape and restoration work one of Rome's most prized museums finally reopened to the public in July.
The gallery, in the Villa Borghese park in central Rome, is a treasure house of masterpieces by artists such as Raphael, Titian, Bernini, Caravaggio and Canova.
Once a must for visitors on the Grand Tour of Italy, the gallery was first closed in December 1983 after a piece of frescoed ceiling crashed to the ground. Investigations revealed that the villa, built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese at the beginning of the 17th century, was resting unstably on a honeycomb of underground tunnels and grottoes, some carved in the soft tufa rock by watercourses, others by the Etruscans.
Work to stabilise the foundations turned out to be lengthy and complex, forcing the closure of the first-floor picture gallery and restricting visits to the ground-floor collection of Baroque sculptures.
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