The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Lazio
10 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in Lazio are Castel Sant'Angelo, Trajan's Column and Arch of Constantine. The list covers 10 squares, streets and monuments. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Few places concentrate so many monuments in so small a space as Rome, the capital of Lazio. Emperors raised columns, arches and tombs to their own glory, and from the Renaissance onwards the popes redesigned the city with squares, fountains and grand stairways that turned ancient ruins into a stage. The result is a city where each piazza belongs to a different century, often built directly on top of the last.
Trajan's Column, dedicated in 113, winds a spiral frieze of the Dacian Wars around its shaft, and the Arch of Constantine celebrates the emperor's victory at the Milvian Bridge with reliefs taken from earlier monuments. Castel Sant'Angelo began as the mausoleum of Hadrian beside the Tiber. Piazza Navona keeps the long oval shape of the stadium of Domitian, with Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers at its centre.
Michelangelo designed the Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill around the statue of Marcus Aurelius. The Spanish Steps, built in the 1720s, climb to the church of Trinità dei Monti, and the Trevi Fountain, completed in 1762, turns the end of an ancient aqueduct into a scene of sea gods and rushing water. The Vittoriano, the vast white monument to Victor Emmanuel II, holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | |
| 2 | Trajan's Column | Sculpture | |
| 3 | Arch of Constantine | Triumphal arch | |
| 4 | Piazza Navona | Square | |
| 5 | Column of Marcus Aurelius | Sculpture | |
| 6 | Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome | Monument | |
| 7 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture | |
| 8 | Spanish Steps | Stairs | |
| 9 | Scala Sancta | Stairs | ✓ |
| 10 | Piazza del Campidoglio | Square |
01 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay Its current name comes from a specific legend: in 590 CE, during a plague, Pope Gregory the Great is said to have seen the Archangel Michael appear on the summit sheathing his sword — read as a sign the epidemic was ending. A statue of the angel has stood on top ever since, and the building has cycled through duty as papal residence, state prison, and now museum, on top of its original job as a tomb.
Did you know? When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, looters scattered the imperial urns and their ashes.
02 Trajan's Column
Colonna Traiana
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.896° N 12.484° E
Raffaele pagani · CC BY-SA 4.0 What makes the column unique is the frieze: a single band of relief about 190 m long that winds 23 times around the shaft, carrying 155 scenes and more than 2,600 figures. The lower half tells the first war, the upper half the second, separated by a winged Victory writing on a shield. Surprisingly little of it is battle.
Did you know? Of the 224 trees carved on the frieze, 48 are shown being chopped down, an image scholars read as a symbol of conquest.
03 Arch of Constantine
Arco di Costantino
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.890° N 12.491° E
Image by TreptowerAlex from Pixabay The arch is a collage. Much of its sculpture was taken from earlier monuments to three of the best-remembered emperors of the 2nd century: Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. Their faces were recut as Constantine's.
Did you know? In 1534 Lorenzino de' Medici hacked heads off some of the arch's statues, and the scandal got him expelled from Rome.
04 Piazza Navona
Italy · 0.7 km from Rome41.899° N 12.473° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 The square as we see it is the work of one papacy. Innocent X, whose family palace faced the arena, turned it into a Baroque showpiece in the mid-seventeenth century. At the centre rises Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers of 1651, crowned by the Obelisk of Domitian, which was brought over in pieces from the Circus of Maxentius.
Did you know? Bernini's four river gods stand for the Nile, Danube, Ganges and RÃo de la Plata, the continents reached by papal authority.
05 Column of Marcus Aurelius
Colonna di Marco Aurelio
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.901° N 12.480° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The relief spirals 21 times around the shaft. It begins with the army crossing the Danube and then follows the campaigns in scene after scene. Compared with Trajan's Column, the carving is cut deeper, with more drilling and stronger contrasts of light and shadow, and the heads are enlarged so that expressions can be read from below.
06 Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome
Vittoriano
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.895° N 12.483° E
Image by serghei_topor from Pixabay Sacconi drew on Hellenistic sanctuaries such as the Altar of Pergamon, and the monument works like a sequence of ascending platforms. At its centre, the bronze equestrian statue of Victor Emmanuel II by Enrico Chiaradia rides above the Altare della Patria, the Altar of the Fatherland, where the goddess Roma, carved by Angelo Zanelli stands at the heart of the composition.
Did you know? Clearing the site meant demolishing the Aracoeli convent along with the sixteenth-century Tower of Paul III.
More about Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome →
07 Trevi Fountain
Fontana di Trevi
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.901° N 12.483° E
Image by jdegheest from Pixabay The fountain as you see it today took decades longer than expected to build. Pope Clement XII opened a design competition in 1730; Nicola Salvi won it, broke ground in 1732, and died in 1751 before the work was done — it was finally finished by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762.
Did you know? The colossal central figure of Oceanus was carved by Pietro Bracci.
08 Spanish Steps
Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.906° N 12.483° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay The staircase takes the idea of terraced garden steps and inflates it to the scale of a city. More than 130 travertine steps split, curve, gather on landings and divide again, so that the view changes at every turn and the church at the top seems to grow as you approach.
Did you know? The divided, symmetrical flights borrow from Bramante's stairs for the Belvedere Courtyard and Michelangelo's shaped steps in the Laurentian Library vestibule.
09 Scala Sancta
Scala Santa
Italy · 2.4 km from Rome41.887° N 12.507° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Miguel Hermoso Cuesta · CC BY-SA 4.0 The rule has not changed in centuries: the central staircase may only be climbed on the knees, usually with a prayer on each step, while four ordinary staircases on either side are for walking. Martin Luther went up on his knees in 1510 and later said he reached the top doubting whether it did any good. Charles Dickens watched the devotion in 1845 and disliked what he saw.
10 Piazza del Campidoglio
Italy · 0.5 km from Rome41.893° N 12.483° E
Image by patrizio1948 from Pixabay The approach is part of the effect. The Cordonata, a broad stepped ramp of Michelangelo's design, climbs gently from the street, and at its top the colossal ancient figures of Castor and Pollux stand beside their horses, flanked by the so-called Trophies of Marius and the first milestone of the Appian Way.
Did you know? The Cordonata was made broad and shallow enough for riders to reach the square on horseback without dismounting.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in Lazio?
- On our list, Castel Sant'Angelo ranks first, followed by Trajan's Column and Arch of Constantine.
- Why is Piazza Navona oval?
- The square follows the outline of the Stadium of Domitian, built in the first century for athletic contests. Houses were later built on the stadium's seating, preserving its shape.
- Why do people throw coins in the Trevi Fountain?
- According to tradition, throwing a coin over your shoulder into the fountain ensures that you will return to Rome. The coins collected are given to charity.
- What does Trajan's Column show?
- A continuous relief spirals about 200 metres around the column, showing the emperor Trajan's campaigns against the Dacians in the early second century.
- How many squares, streets and monuments are on this list in Lazio?
- The list covers 10 squares, streets and monuments.