Rome’s Top 10 : Squares and Fountains

Piazza Navona

The elongated oval of Rome’s loveliest square hints that it is built atop Domitian’s ancient stadium .
This pedestrian paradise is filled with cafés, street performers and
artists, milling tourists, kids playing football, and splashing
fountains. Bernini designed the central Fountain of Four Rivers, and
added the Moor figure to the most southerly of the piazza’s other two
fountains, constantly altered from the 16th to 19th centuries .

Trevi Fountain

Tradition
holds that if you throw coins into this 1732 Nicola Salvi fountain, you
ensure a return to Rome. Ingeniously grafted on to the back of a
palazzo (even the windowsills mutate into rough rocks), the Trevi marks
the end of the Acqua Vergine aqueduct, built by Agrippa in 19 BC from a
spring miraculously discovered by a virgin .

Campo de’ Fiori

This
“field of flowers” bursts with colour during the morning market, and
again after dark when its pubs and bars make it a centre of Roman
nightlife. The dour hooded statue overlooking all is in honour of
Giordano Bruno, a theologian who was burned at the stake here for his
progressive heresies in 1600 during the Counter-Reformation .

Piazza del Popolo

Architect
Giuseppe Valadier expanded this site of festivals and public executions
into an elegant piazza in 1811–23, adding four Egyptian-style lion
fountains to the base of one of Rome’s oldest obelisks. The 1200 BC
Ramases II monolith was moved to the Circus Maximus by Augustus then
placed here by Pope Sixtus V .

Piazza San Pietro

Bernini’s
gargantuan colonnade, 196 m (640 ft) across, embraces the hordes of
worshippers and tourists arriving at St Peter’s. Its perfect ellipse is
confirmed by the optical illusion of disappearing columns afforded by
standing at one of the focus points – marble discs set between the
central 1st-century BC obelisk, carved in Egypt for a Roman Prefect, and
either fountain: Bernini’s on the left, Domenico Fontana’s on the right.

Fontana delle Tartarughe

Giacomo della Porta designed this delightful fountain between 1581 and 1584. The turtles (tartarughe) struggling up over the lip, however, were added in 1658, perhaps by Bernini .

Piazza Barberini

This
busy piazza is centred on Bernini’s Triton Fountain (1642–3), the
merman spouting water from a conch shell. It was commissioned by Pope
Urban VIII and features his family symbol (bees) on its base .

Piazza Venezia

The
de facto centre of Rome and convergence of traffic patterns, during
evening rush hour conducted with balletic brio by a white-gloved
policeman. The piazza is flanked by the Palazzo Venezia, from whose
balcony Mussolini once exhorted hordes to the joys of Fascism .

Fountain of the Naiads

The
water spouting from Bernini’s Triton is puny compared to the gushes
rising from Glaucus in this huge fountain and traffic circle. The
fountain is surrounded by naiads and horses in this 1888 confection by
Mario Rutelli (grandfather of Francesco, the city’s mayor from 1993 to
2001).

• Piazza della Republica

Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere

A
perfect neighbourhood square: cafés, shops, a fine restaurant, and a
17th-century palazzo abutting a medieval church, its mosaics
romantically floodlit at night. A fountain fitted with shells by Carlo
Fontana (1682) atop a pedestal of stairs serves as benches for
backpackers to strum guitars and tourists to eat ice cream .