Doria Pamphilj Gallery

The Doria Pamphilj family still owns this palace on the Corso and still lives in part of it, and the collection has never been broken up or nationalised, so the paintings hang in the rooms and the arrangement they were bought for, four hundred works in galleries lined frame to frame in the seventeenth-century manner rather than spaced as a modern museum would. The centrepiece is Velázquez's 1650 portrait of Innocent X, a Pamphilj pope, so unsparing that the sitter reportedly said it was too true; Francis Bacon based a long series of paintings on it. Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael and Bruegel are also here. The audio guide is narrated by a family member.

What you actually see

• The Velázquez Innocent X - the portrait the pope called too true.
• The frame-to-frame hang - galleries arranged as they were in the 1600s.
• The Caravaggios - including the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.
• The family audio guide - narration by a member of the household.

When to go

Year-round; the gallery closes on the third Wednesday of each month and some holidays. It is far quieter than the Borghese or the Vatican and rarely needs booking.

Honest expectations

The dense hang makes individual works hard to see and lighting is uneven. Some rooms are closed when the family uses them. It is a private house, so facilities are limited.

Nearby

Piazza Venezia lies south; the Trevi Fountain is east.