From CNN Style Correspondent Elsa Klensch

ROME (CNN) -- A palazzo designed for one reason -- to display the precious pieces of collector Cardinal Borghese -- reopened last year after 13 years of extensive renovations.

Villa Borghese's opening marks the joyful celebration of the first completed project for Rome's jubilee in the year 2000.

Borghese wanted the museum and surrounding gardens, built in 1605, to be a contemplation of art and nature together.

Professor Claudio Strinati said the Villa Borghese has always been one of, if not the most popular, museums in Italy.

"We have 500 paintings and three or four hundred sculptures, so the restoration took many years," he said. "But today the museum is completely restored and is in very, very good condition."

Both the building and the works reflect the end of the Renaissance period and the beginning of the Baroque. The stars of the collection are the sculptures of the Cardinal's young protege, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

"In a certain way, the Cardinal had the idea and Bernini translated this kind of idea in the new Baroque style," Strinati said.

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CNN's Elsa Klensch travels to Rome to tour the recently reopened villa
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Of the many paintings at the museum, some of the most important are those of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, another close friend of the Cardinal and a painter known for his amazing use of light.

"The last work of Caravaggio, the "David and Goliath," was an astonishing painting, terrific -- representing Caravaggio himself in the head of Goliath, and the young David who is Caravaggio himself when he was young," Strinati said.

The Villa Borghese contains one of Titian's most famous paintings, the "Sacred and Profane Love."

Strinati describes it as a mysterious painting "representing two women, one is with a wonderful dress and one is a bare woman."

"And this meaning, the real meaning, is a problem for centuries."

Strinati says the re-opening of the museum is something of a new rebirth.

"Today is the renaissance of art, of culture in Italy. And for us, but for all people to the world."