Page 414 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

412  ROME AND LAZIO

Street-by-Street: Piazza di Spagna

The network of narrow streets around Piazza di Spagna forms
one of the most exclusive areas in Rome, drawing droves of
tourists and Romans to the elegant shops around Via Condotti.
The square and its nearby coffee houses have long attracted
those who want to see and be seen. In the 18th century the
area was full of hotels for frivolous aristocrats doing the
Grand Tour, as well as artists, writers and composers, who
took the city’s history and culture more seriously.

Caffé Greco is an 18th-century
café once frequented by writers
and musicians such as Keats,
Goethe, Byron, Liszt and Wagner. Trinità dei Monti is a
16th-century church at
Spagna the top of the Spanish
Steps. There are fine
views of Rome from
the stairway.

Babington’s Tea
Rooms, founded
VIALE TRINITA
DEI MONTI
by two English
spinsters in
1896, still serves
English teas.

P I A Z Z A D I S PA G N A
MIGNANELLI
V I A C O N D O T T I PIAZZA

V I A C A P O L E C A S E

The Keats-Shelley
V I A D I P R O PA G A N D A
Memorial House,
where the poet Keats
died in 1821, is now a
museum honouring
English Romantic
poets.

The Collegio di
Propaganda
The Colonna dell’ Fide, built for the
1 . Piazza di Spagna and Immacolata, erected in Jesuits in 1662,
the Spanish Steps 1857, commemorates has a superb
These have been at the heart Pope Pius IX’s doctrine façade designed
of tourist Rome since the of the Immaculate by Francesco
18th century. Conception. Borromini.
For hotels and restaurants in this region see pp573–6 and pp596–600

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