Palazzo Barberini

Museum · Trevi / QuirinaleRome,Italy

A Rome palace holding two staircases by lifelong rivals, Bernini's square and Borromini's helix, above the national collection of older painting.

Palazzo Barberini holds two staircases by two rivals, and climbing both is the point of coming. Bernini's is a square stairwell of straight flights, wide and stately, built so that a guest coming up could be watched from below. Borromini's is a tight helix carried on paired columns, and each turn is a little smaller than the one beneath it, so the shaft seems to run further up than the roof allows. The two men were rivals for forty years, and here their work stands a two-minute walk apart. Upstairs the rooms hold the national collection of older painting. Raphael's portrait of a woman wears a bracelet with his name on it; Caravaggio's Judith kills a man with a look of distaste on her face; Holbein's Henry VIII was painted for a marriage negotiation. The great salon between them has a ceiling by Pietro da Cortona in which the family's three bees fly up into an open sky. The palace went up between 1627 and 1633 for the family of a reigning pope, and for a collection this good it gets very few visitors.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Do the two staircases back to back — take Bernini's square one up, walk the length of the building, and come down Borromini's oval, which is the only way to see how different they are.
This is the great gallery nobody queues for — Raphael, Caravaggio and Holbein hang in near-empty rooms while the queues form at the sights ten minutes away.
Shoot Borromini's stair straight up the middle — from the bottom step, dead centre, the oval closes into a spiral and the columns disappear into it.
Start counting the bees — the family emblem is worked into the ceilings, the doorframes, the fountain outside and the stone of the façade, and the palace was built to make sure you noticed.

Things to do

1
Climb the square stair, come down the oval
Start at Bernini's staircase on the right of the entrance hall and go up at a walking pace. Cross the main floor above, find Borromini's oval spiral at the far end, and come down it slowly with a hand on the wall. Bernini's square stair was built as a route for guests arriving to be received; Borromini's oval one was built to show off geometry, and you see that geometry from inside the curve.
2
Tip your head back under the salon ceiling
The great reception room is nearly empty of furniture, so you can stand in the middle and look straight up. Follow the bees: they rise through the painted opening toward a crown. Then look at the corners, where the real architecture of the room is continued in paint, so the walls seem to open into a sky that is not there.
3
Stand close to Caravaggio's Judith
Caravaggio's canvas is hung at eye level in a small room. Get near it. The interesting thing is not the violence but the girl's face: she is leaning away from what her hands are doing, with her brow drawn, as though the job is worse than she expected.