Page 405 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

ROME : AROUND PIAZZA NA VONA  403

Sant’Agnese in Agone 1 Piazza Navona
by Borromini (1657) Map 2 E4. @ 30, 70, 81, 87, 130, 186,
is allegedly built on 492, 628.
the site where, AROUND
PIAZZA
in AD 304, the NAVONA Rome’s most beautiful Baroque
young St Agnes Tevere piazza follows the shape of a
was exposed 1st-century-AD stadium built by
naked to force VATICAN
AND
her to renounce TRASTEVERE Domitian, which was used for
her faith. athletic contests (agones),
Locator Map chariot races and other sports.
See Rome Street Finder map 2 Traces of the stadium are still
visible below the church of
Sant’Agnese in Agone, which is
dedicated to a virgin martyred
Fontana dei on the site for refusing to marry
Quattro Fiumi 3 San Luigi dei Francesi
This church, which was a pagan.
completed in 1589, is best The piazza began to take on
known for three paintings its present appearance in the
by Caravaggio. 17th century, when Pope
Innocent X, whose family
D E L L A N I M A palazzo was on the piazza,
commissioned a new church,
palace and fountain. The
fountain, the Fontana dei
Quattro Fiumi, is Bernini’s most
magnificent, with statues of the
V I A D I S A N TA M A R I A P I A Z Z A N A V O N A A G O N A L E V I A D E L S A L V AT O R E that time (the Nile, the Plate,
four great rivers of the world at
the Ganges and the Danube)
sitting on rocks below an
C O R S I A
obelisk. Bernini also designed
the muscle-bound Moor in the
Fontana del Moro, though the
RINASCIMENTO
CORSO DEL seat of the Italian Senate, the 19th century, the piazza
Palazzo Madama, the present statue is a copy. Until
was originally built for was flooded in August by
the Medici family in the stopping the fountain outlets.
16th century, on the site The rich would splash around
V I A D E G L I
S TA D E R A R I
of one of their banks. in carriages, while street
urchins paddled. Even today
2 Sant’Ivo alla the piazza remains the social
Sapienza centre of the city.
This tiny domed church
is one of Borromini’s
V I A D E I S E D I A R I
most original creations.
He worked on it
between 1642 and 1650.
S A N T Ź A N D R E A
P I A Z Z A D I
D E L L A V A L L E
Largo di Torre
Argentina

1. Piazza Navona
The piazza is lined with palaces and pavement cafés, Symbolic figure of the River Nile on
and punctuated by flamboyant Baroque fountains. Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

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