Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica

Rome's national collection of older painting lives in two Baroque palaces, and the grander is the Palazzo Barberini, built in the 1620s for a family that had just put one of its own on the papal throne. Both Bernini and his rival Borromini worked on it, and Borromini's oval staircase spirals up in tightening loops beside Bernini's broad square one.

The rooms hold pictures that stop people in their tracks. Raphael's La Fornarina, a bare-shouldered young woman thought to be the painter's lover, wears an armband with his name. Caravaggio's Judith cuts through the neck of the sleeping general Holofernes with a look of frowning distaste. Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry the Eighth shows the king square and jewelled, staring straight out.

Overhead, a ceiling painted by Pietro da Cortona opens into a swirl of allegory glorifying the Barberini, their family emblem of bees scattered across the vault.