Museo Carlo Bilotti – Aranciera di Villa Borghese

The Carlo Bilotti Museum occupies the Aranciera in Villa Borghese, a former garden building restored to house works donated by Carlo, Edvige and Roberto Bilotti and Cora Hahn to the City of Rome. The collection includes paintings and sculpture by Giorgio de Chirico, Andy Warhol, Gino Severini and Giacomo Manzù.

Why it matters

The museum brings a focused group of modern works into a historic building in the gardens of Villa Borghese. Its core includes twenty-two donated works, with a substantial group by de Chirico spanning the late 1920s to the 1970s. The collection also records the Bilotti family's relationships with artists whose work they collected.

What to notice

De Chirico's works include Oreste e Pilade, Orfeo solitario and Cavalli in riva al mare. Andy Warhol's Tina e Lisa Bilotti (1981) portrays the collector's wife and daughter; Larry Rivers's Carlo con Dubuffet sullo sfondo (1994) includes a reference to Jean Dubuffet. Severini's L'estate and Manzù's bronze Cardinale represent other parts of the collection.

Context and history

The Aranciera began as a residence of the Ceuli family and later became part of the Borghese estate. In the late eighteenth century it was enlarged and decorated as the Casino dei Giuochi d'Acqua. Damaged in the bombardments of 1849, it was rebuilt and later used to shelter citrus trees in winter, giving it the name Aranciera. After Villa Borghese passed to the city in 1903, the building served several civic uses before restoration for the museum, inaugurated in 2006.