WHADDAYAKNOW!
I visited the amazing Villa Borghese up north in Rome's city center on Sunday. The park surrounding the villa is gorgeous, and also lots of fun: there is an Elizabethian Globe theatre there (of course built in recent time...), there is a lake where you can rent rowing boats, and there also is big carlike tandem bikes for rent (tourists and locals both love them, apparently).
The villa itself is in one of the "corners" of the park, and apart from being an amazing piece of architecture, contain some utterly fab pieces of art. I mean, really top notch stuff. I won't bore you with details - have a look here http://www.galleriaborghese.it/borghese/en/edefault.htm if you want to see some of their stuff.
But I want to mention two paintings from their collection: Raphael's Lady with Unicorn and Tiziano's Sacred and profane love. I mention these because of the garbs. The Villa Borghese museum has actually made some for-sale versions of the jewellery present in these paintings - the pendant from the Unicorn dress, and the belt from the Tiziano painting:
The belt was cool enough, but looked simplified and too modern. The Unicorn one was very detailed and nice, but smaller than what the portrait shows, and the tear-shaped pearl was more of a lump... But apart from that: how cool is this? I mean... Think of how expensive a costumers live would have gotten if all museums did this... He-he. I didn't buy the Unicorn pendant. Had it been perfect, sure. But 't was cool to see!