Proposals for new solutions to expand what the gallery can offer: displaying works currently held in storage, staging new exhibitions and conferences, equipping restoration laboratories, and improving accessibility and services for a growing public, for people with disabilities and for schools.
First round applications due by 13 November 2026
Proger S.p.A., Italy’s leading independent engineering firm, is launching an international architecture competition to find new answers to the needs of the museum complex, acting as Technical Sponsor of Galleria Borghese and with the endorsement of Roma Capitale.
The ideas competition aims to secure a design proposal that responds to the museum’s new requirements and to the demand for a cultural offer accessible to all, while taking into account heritage protection constraints, integration into the landscape and environmental sustainability. The goal is to explore solutions of high cultural, architectural and landscape quality that can improve how the museum functions and enhance the setting of Villa Borghese. Proposals must combine innovation, historic preservation, heritage enhancement and energy efficiency, with particular attention to environmental impact and to ecological, historic and landscape balance.
The initiative stems from the structural needs of one of the world’s most prestigious museums. It must be developed in full compliance with the many protection constraints that apply to the site, following an integrated architectural, social, environmental, energy and structural vision. The intervention allows for the possible construction of a new volume, or the redesign of existing structures, covering no more than 3,000 square metres, including external landscaping.
Planned functions include public display of masterpieces currently kept in storage, temporary exhibitions of international significance, conservation and restoration laboratories, education areas, conference rooms, a bookshop, catering services and advanced digital infrastructure. Together these will allow visitor flows to be managed and distributed more effectively, helping to reduce pressure on the routes and spaces of the Casino Nobile and improving the visitor experience there.
“Galleria Borghese,” says Francesca Cappelletti, Director of the Galleria Borghese, “has a centuries-long history of collecting, a deep relationship between architecture and landscape, a transformation into a public museum, and a constant search for balance between identity and inclusion. The call for this ideas competition continues that line of inquiry: to gain a non-binding perspective on the future and to keep thinking of the museum as a fundamental part of our cultural history and of society.”
“This competition was created to strengthen the gallery’s capacity as an open place, accessible to all, where a remarkable historic heritage is in dialogue with a contemporary outlook,” says Marco Lombardi, CEO of Proger. “The projects it produces will be a gift to the Galleria Borghese, the Ministry of Culture and Roma Capitale, who will decide what to do with them. It is not a building site, it is not a building, it is not yet even a drawing: today it is a question, put to the best architects in the world, about how a seventeenth-century noble residence can finally welcome the public of the third millennium without betraying itself. For us, progress is never at odds with protecting history. A legacy is not preserved by standing still. It is earned.”
The procedure
The competition is held in two stages and run entirely online via the certified CAN (Competition Architecture Network) platform of the Order of Architects of Rome and Province.
The first stage, an open (non-anonymous) pre-selection, is open to all qualified professionals, individually or in teams, who must submit their application dossiers by 12:00 noon on 13 November 2026. A maximum of five finalists will be selected for the second stage on the basis of reference projects, the design team’s experience and an initial methodological approach.
The finalists will then proceed anonymously to the second stage, submitting their projects by 18 March 2027. The jury, made up of independent experts and figures of renowned reputation and recognised expertise, will choose the winning project, to be announced by 14 May 2027. The winner will receive a lump sum of €500,750 as prize and fee for completing the Technical and Economic Feasibility Project (PFTE) submitted. The other four finalists will each receive a participation prize of €25,000.
The criteria
Assessment will reward the overall quality of the project in relation to the constraints of the site and the intervention’s ability to enhance and improve its setting, as well as compliance with environmental sustainability requirements and the adoption of innovative technological solutions designed to maximise efficiency, energy savings and flexibility, including through smart building technologies.
The project, developed using BIM methodology, must incorporate the Minimum Environmental Criteria (CAM) and integrate life cycle assessment (LCA), ensuring compliance with the strict historic, landscape and environmental sustainability standards that apply to the site. Particular attention must be paid to safeguarding the Villa’s trees and to upgrading the surrounding areas, through design solutions and construction methods intended to ensure a net gain in vegetation once the works are complete.