Borghese

Borghese, a noble Italian family of Sienese origin, first mentioned in 1238, a member of which, Marcantonio Borghese, settled in Rome and was the father of Camillo Borghese (1550-1620), elected pope under the title of Paul V. (1605). Paul created his nephew prince of Vivero on the 17th of November 1609, and Philip III. of Spain conferred the title of prince of Sulmona on him in 1610. The family took its place among the higher Roman nobility by the marriage of the prince’s son Paolo with Olimpia, heiress of the Aldobrandini family, in 1614. In 1803 Camillo Filippo Ludovico, Prince Borghese (b. 1775), married Pauline, sister of the emperor Napoleon, and widow of General Leclerc. In 1806 he was made duke of Guastalla, and for some years acted as governor of the Piedmontese and Genoese provinces. After the fall of Napoleon he fixed his residence at Florence, where he died in 1832. The Borghese palace at Rome is one of the most magnificent buildings in the city, and contained a splendid gallery of pictures, most of which have been transferred to the Villa Borghese outside the Porto del Popolo, now Villa Umberto I., the property of the Italian government.

See A. von Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, iii. 605, 609 617, &c.; Almanach de Gotha (Gotha, 1902); J.H. Douglas, The Principal Noble Families of Rome (Rome, 1905).

* * *