Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, used the villa as a country house at the edge of Rome. Flaminio Ponzio built it from Scipione's sketches, and the Flemish architect Giovanni Vasanzio designed the main building. The portico reuses spolia from the Arch of Claudius, which once stood on the Via Flaminia.
Around 1775 Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese began turning the formal garden into an English landscape garden. With the architect Antonio Asprucci he renovated the Casina and rearranged the sculptures. Asprucci decorated the Gallery of the Emperors from 1778 to 1780 and the Egyptian Hall from 1778 to 1782.
The villa was sold to the Italian government in 1902, and the gallery was established in 1903. It holds Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpina, Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Canova's portrait of Pauline Borghese and Titian's Sacred and Profane Love.
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