Is Palazzo Colonna worth visiting? Yes for a spare Saturday morning, and think harder if it is this or the Borghese

A small lemon tree in a terracotta pot on raked gravel beside a zinc watering can — A lemon tree in a pot, a watering can and gravel. A still life; the palace’s own garden appears on this site only in credited photographs from Wikimedia Commons.

In short: two different people ask this question. If you have a spare Friday or Saturday morning in Rome and you like paintings in the rooms they were bought for, the answer is a straightforward yes: it is a private house, the same family has held it since the 1200s, and the gallery was built as one room to be seen whole. If you are choosing between this and the Borghese, the honest answer is that they are not competing for the same morning, and the thing that should decide it is your calendar rather than a ranking — because this one opens eight hours a week and that is the constraint that settles most of these trips.

Opentwo mornings a week

Gallery opened1700

Vault completed1702

Held by one family sincethe 1200s

Entry ticket rated4.8 from 898

Borghese ticket rated4.5 from 3,595

If you have a spare morning in Rome

Go. I take groups round Rome’s palace galleries on these two mornings and this is the one I would send somebody to first, for a reason that has nothing to do with rankings: it is still a house. The family lives in part of it. You are not walking through a museum that was once somebody’s home, you are walking through somebody’s home on the mornings they let people in, which is a different feeling and it does not survive being described.

What is checkable. The gallery was begun in 1654 by Cardinal Girolamo I Colonna and his nephew Lorenzo Onofrio, built by Antonio del Grande, opened in 1700, and its vault was finished in 1702 with episodes from the life of Marcantonio II Colonna, including the Battle of Lepanto of 1571, at which he commanded the papal fleet. The route runs through eight named spaces. On the short flight of stairs before the Great Hall there is a cannonball that landed there in 1849, fired by the French from the Janiculum during the Roman Republic. The picture people come for is Annibale Carracci’s Il Mangiafagioli, the Beaneater, which is a man eating beans and is worth the ticket on its own. And the ending of Roman Holiday, from 1953, was shot in the Great Hall — that scene and no other.

Two reviewers on the entry ticket describe the same thing in different words. Suzana: “it’s worth visiting as there are few tourists in the gallery”. Andew: “the best kept secret in Rome”. I am quoting those for what they describe rather than as a survey — 184 of the 188 written reviews across this whole catalogue are five-star, which cannot be the population behind averages that run from 4.0 to 5.0. The route, in the operator’s own order, is here.

What works

A private collection still in the family’s own building
Quiet, by the standards of central Rome, and reviewers say so repeatedly
One gallery built as a single room, opened in 1700, vault finished in 1702
Carracci’s Beaneater, and Bronzino, Tintoretto, Reni, Guercino and Rosa around it
A cannonball from 1849 still in the staircase, and the operator explains it plainly

Worth knowing

Eight hours a week, on two mornings, and no afternoons
The cheaper Saturday ticket stops before the Princess Isabelle apartments
The platform charges roughly twice what the door charges, at both tiers
Two of the four platform listings gate an inclusion behind an option box
The door you need changes with the day

If you are choosing between this and the Borghese

They are the two obvious private collections in Rome and they are genuinely comparable: another family’s building, another timed ticket, another collection bought rather than assembled by a state. So here is the difference that actually decides it, and it is not aesthetic.

The decisive fact sits on this side of the comparison. This palace is open on Friday and Saturday mornings and, without a private booking, on nothing else. That is eight hours a week. If you are in Rome from a Sunday to a Thursday the choice is not yours to make, and no amount of preferring one collection to the other will change it. If your trip does cover a Friday or a Saturday morning, you can have both: put this one in the morning it is available in and the Borghese wherever its own calendar allows. I am not going to print the Borghese’s hours here, because they are its to publish and not mine to summarise.

On the platform the Borghese ticket carries 3,595 ratings against the Colonna entry ticket’s 898, which is 4.0 times as many, and the Vatican Museums entrance carries 155,295, which is 172.9 times as many. Those are ratings on a booking platform, not visitor numbers and not quality scores. Nobody publishes attendance for Palazzo Colonna. A building open two mornings a week will always carry a smaller number than one open six days, and that is arithmetic about opening hours rather than a judgement about paintings.

What this palace has: it is still lived in by the family that has held it since the 1200s, its gallery was built as one room to be seen whole, and it stands a few minutes’ walk from the Trevi Fountain and from Piazza Venezia. What it does not have is a timetable that fits any week. I am not going to rank the two by beauty, on this page or anywhere else on this site. Why that question gets refused, and what gets answered instead, is here.

What the extra money on the platform is buying, honestly

The operator’s short Saturday ticket is about fifteen euros and the platform’s cheapest way in is about twice that. At the complete tier the gap is a little narrower. On every other building I have written up in this series the platform charged what the door charged, so this is worth stating rather than burying.

It is still not a swindle, and here is the case for paying it. The palace is open for four hours on a Saturday. If you are flying into Rome for three days in October with one of those mornings free, a confirmed booking made in September removes the only real risk in the plan, and it removes it before you are standing in Via della Pilotta. That is a product. Buy it with your eyes open rather than under the impression that it is the same price as the door, and read the inclusions before you pay, because two of the four listings gate something. Both tariffs are laid out side by side here.

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Who should not bother

If your Rome trip does not include a Friday or Saturday morning, this is not a decision you get to make; it is a building that will be shut. If you want depth on one painter and a curator’s narrative, this is a family’s collection hung as a family hung it, and a purpose-built museum will serve you better. And if you are travelling with children who lose interest quickly in gilding, the gardens will buy you a little time and the cannonball will buy you a little more, but not a morning.

One reviewer on the guided listing, writing under the name Purple, put a real limitation plainly: the introduction to the family’s history was “very detailed and wonderful”, and “it’s a shame that there’s a limit to the places you can take your time to see”. That is a guided visit doing what guided visits do, and it is the trade against Saturday’s four unmanaged hours. Which morning suits which reader is worked through here.

The ticket itself

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More: the Great Hall, the cannonball, the paintings worth the trip, and the family that still owns it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Palazzo Colonna worth visiting?

If your trip covers a Friday or Saturday morning, yes. It is a private collection still in the family’s own building, its gallery opened in 1700 with the vault finished in 1702, it holds Carracci’s Beaneater, and it is quiet by central Rome standards. The constraint is the timetable rather than the contents: it is open eight hours a week.

Is Palazzo Colonna better than the Borghese?

That is a taste question and this site does not answer taste questions. The checkable difference is availability, and it sits on this side: Palazzo Colonna opens on Friday and Saturday mornings and on nothing else without a private booking. If your trip includes one of those mornings you can have both. If it does not, the choice has been made for you.

Is it worth paying more to book online?

It can be, and you should know what you are buying. The platform charges roughly twice the door at both tiers. What that buys is a confirmed booking made before you travel for a building open two mornings a week, which is worth real money if you have one free morning in Rome. It does not buy anything extra inside.

How long do you need inside?

The Saturday opening is four hours long and most people use rather less. The route runs through eight named spaces plus the gardens and, on the complete ticket, the Princess Isabelle apartments. If you are coming for the gallery and the Beaneater alone, a Saturday morning is generous.

Is Palazzo Colonna worth it with children?

Partly. The gardens and the cannonball in the staircase hold attention, and the cannonball has a story the operator tells plainly: it landed there in 1849, fired by the French from the Janiculum. A morning of painted ceilings is a longer ask. There is no separate child tariff on the operator’s published rates.