A substantial part of what Borromini built in Rome is now an embassy, a foreign academy, a Vatican department or a building site. These are buildings you cannot go into, or can go into twice a year on an organised visit.
Guidebooks usually name them and move on, and the result is that the reader turns up outside, finds the door shut and leaves convinced they had the wrong address.
This article does the opposite: it treats them for what they are, architecture to be looked at from the street, and says which spot to look from. There are four of them, all in the historic centre, and three of the four are better seen from outside than from within.
Propaganda Fide, where Borromini demolished a Bernini
The Palazzo di Propaganda Fide stands at Piazza di Spagna, and its history is the rivalry in miniature.
The main facade, the one on the square, is by Bernini and dates from 1644. Then relations between the congregation and Bernini soured, and in 1646 the commission passed to Borromini, who worked on the flank of the building, on Via di Propaganda.
What he does there is his most radical piece. The facade has no plane: the pilasters are as thick as piers, the windows and the wings recede in concave curves, the central section pushes outwards. The wall moves along its whole length, in a street so narrow that to see it you have to put your back against the building opposite and tilt your head.
And inside? In 1666, the year before he died, Borromini built the oratory of the Magi, and to do it he demolished the oval chapel Bernini had built. This is not a handed-down anecdote: it is documented, and it is the most eloquent gesture in the whole affair between the two men.
How you see it today. The facade on Via di Propaganda is public and can be looked at at any hour, and it remains the most important thing on this list. The chapel of the Magi cannot be visited freely: you get in through the special openings organised by Roman cultural associations, paid and by booking, a few times a year.
The palace also houses the Missionary Museum of Propaganda Fide, which when open is the ordinary way in. At the check on 30 August 2026 the museum’s own site declares the entrance temporarily closed for restoration work: check before counting on it.
The Oratorio dei Filippini, the facade that looks like an embrace
Next to the Chiesa Nuova, on Piazza della Chiesa Nuova, stands a building of pale brick with a slightly curved facade that recedes in the middle as if to welcome whoever arrives from the square.
It is the Oratorio dei Filippini, and Borromini built it between 1637 and 1643 after winning the competition held by the Oratorian fathers.
What is worth knowing, looking at it, is that this facade is not the facade of a church: the church is the one next door, in travertine, and it is by other hands. This is the facade of a hall for music and preaching, a secular building inside a religious complex, and Borromini builds it in brick precisely so that it will not compete with the church.
The name of the oratory is also the origin of a word we all use: the Oratorians performed their musical laude here, and it is from this institution that the musical genre took the name oratorio.
How you see it today. The facade and the ensemble with the Chiesa Nuova are seen from the square. The interior, the so-called Sala Borromini, has no ordinary visits: it can be seen during conferences and cultural events, or on request to the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, which is housed in the same complex. Check the programme before counting on it.
Palazzo Falconieri, the falcons on Via Giulia
At the start of Via Giulia, on the Tiber side, stands a palace that since 1927 has housed the Hungarian Academy in Rome.
Borromini worked on it from 1646 for the Falconieri family, and left three things you can recognise from outside.
The first are the herms at the corners of the facade on Via Giulia: female busts with falcon heads, the speaking arms of the Falconieri. They are the most photographed feature of the building and they sit high up, so you have to look up as you walk.
The second is the three-arched loggia that closes the palace towards the river, from 1646: you see it from the Lungotevere and from the bridge, and it is the reason this palace has two different faces depending on which side you look from.
The third is inside and almost never seen: the stucco ceilings of the state rooms, among the most elaborate things Borromini ever designed.
How you see it today. The exterior is public. The Academy runs exhibitions, concerts and events, and parts of the palace open on those occasions; once a year the building takes part in Rome’s open-house days. That is the only realistic way to see the ceilings.
Palazzo Pamphilj, the gallery inside an embassy
On the west side of Piazza Navona, next to Sant’Agnese in Agone, is the palace of Pope Innocent X’s family. Today it is the Embassy of Brazil.
Inside there is a gallery designed by Borromini, long and narrow, frescoed by Pietro da Cortona with the story of Aeneas: one of the rare cases in which the two greatest names of Roman Baroque, the architect and the painter, work on the same room.
How do you get into an embassy to see a fresco? By an embassy’s rules, not a museum’s.
How you see it today. The embassy runs guided visits by booking, on set dates and in small groups, with participants’ details and an identity document to be given when booking. It goes through the embassy’s website or the associations that manage the openings. This is not a visit you improvise on the day, which is why this stop has to be decided before you leave, not once you are in Rome.
How to line them up
Three of the four are close together and take an hour, if the aim is to see them from outside.
The short walk. Piazza Navona for Palazzo Pamphilj, then five minutes to Piazza della Chiesa Nuova for the Oratorio dei Filippini, then another five to Via Giulia for Palazzo Falconieri. Three facades in twenty minutes of walking.
The fourth. Propaganda Fide is on the other side, at Piazza di Spagna, and is best combined with a day on that side of the centre: from the palace it is five minutes to Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, which is another of his works and that one is open.
The right hour. Via di Propaganda is narrow and in shadow for much of the day: the curving wall reads better with the sun high, around midday, which is the opposite of the usual advice.
Practical information
Details checked on 30 August 2026 on the sites of the institutions that occupy the four buildings and on the Rome tourism board’s listings. This is the category of information that ages fastest of all: special openings, restorations and visiting calendars change from month to month.
Tickets. Looking from the street costs nothing. The guided visits to the chapel of the Magi and to Palazzo Pamphilj are paid and organised by third parties, at prices that change with each initiative.
Bookings. Palazzo Pamphilj goes through the Embassy of Brazil, with participants’ details; the chapel of the Magi and Palazzo Falconieri through Roman cultural associations and the open-house days; the Oratorio dei Filippini through the Biblioteca Vallicelliana.
How long. An hour for the three in the centre, half an hour for Propaganda Fide.
If the street-level walk leaves you wanting to get inside something, the simplest answer is Piazza Navona, where the route begins: the Stadium of Domitian is still under the square, and it can be visited on a guided tour of the underground.
What to see nearby
The works by Borromini you really can visit are few and all within reach of this walk: San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, open every weekday, Borromini’s perspective gallery at Palazzo Spada, five minutes from Via Giulia, and the four Roman churches by Borromini, all free.
Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza sits halfway between the two categories: the church is closed for restoration, but the courtyard can be crossed.
To understand why so many of these commissions were fought over, there is Bernini and Borromini.
To build a day that alternates the closed facades with the stops you can enter, there is the itinerary of Borromini’s works in Rome.
Photo credits. Propaganda Fide: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 4.0. Oratorio dei Filippini: Geobia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Palazzo Falconieri: Jordiferrer, CC BY-SA 4.0. All from Wikimedia Commons.
