Piazza Navona

Interesting facts

Domitian's stadium seated about 30,000 spectators and was some 275 metres long, which is why the square is so stretched.

The name Navona evolved from in agone, the Latin phrase for the games over the centuries.

In 217 AD, after fire damaged the Colosseum, the stadium briefly hosted gladiator fights for a few years.

According to tradition, Saint Agnes was martyred in one of the stadium's arcades, and the church on the square keeps her skull in a shrine.

Bernini's four river gods stand for the Nile, Danube, Ganges and Río de la Plata, the continents reached by papal authority.

The popular legend that Bernini's figures recoil from Borromini's church is impossible: the fountain was finished before work on the church began.

According to Bernini's biographer Baldinucci, he won the fountain commission after a model was secretly placed where Pope Innocent X would see it.

The obelisk is crowned by a dove holding an olive branch, the heraldic emblem of the Pamphilj family.

Palazzo Pamphilj, the papal family palace on the square, now houses the Embassy of Brazil.

The square became a public space in the late fifteenth century, when the city market moved here from the Capitoline Hill.

Why it is worth it

Piazza Navona keeps the exact outline of a Roman racetrack. Emperor Domitian built a stadium here around 80 AD for athletic contests, the agones, and when the stands were quarried away after the fall of the empire the houses that replaced them simply followed the curve. The result is Rome's most theatrical public room: a long, narrow oval, closed at the northern end by a rounded turn, where the buildings stand where the spectators once sat.

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. Behind it stands the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, the work of Borromini together with Girolamo and Carlo Rainaldi. The Palazzo Pamphilj next door holds a gallery designed by Borromini and frescoed by Pietro da Cortona.

The two end fountains frame the composition. At the south, Giacomo della Porta's Fontana del Moro of 1575 received its central figure, a Moor wrestling a dolphin, from Bernini's workshop a century later; at the north, della Porta's matching basin had to wait until 1878 for its Neptune, added to balance the other end. For two centuries, from 1652 to 1866, the piazza was flooded on summer weekends in August for the Pamphilj festivities, and carriages splashed through the shallow lake. The produce market that once filled the space moved to nearby Campo de' Fiori in 1869; since then the square has belonged to walkers, street painters and, each December, a Christmas fair.

Come early in the morning, when the fountains can be heard and the light slides along the curved east side, or at dusk when the ochre and rose façades glow.

Getting there

Piazza Navona is in the heart of Rome's historic centre, about 3 km from the centre of Rome. The nearest airport is Ciampino–G. B. Pastine International Airport (CIA), about 15 km away. The piazza is pedestrian; arrive on foot.

From the encyclopaedia

Piazza Navona is a public open space in Rome, Italy. It is built on the site of the 1st century AD Stadium of Domitian and follows the form of the open space of the stadium in an elongated oval. The ancient Romans went there to watch the agones ("games"), and hence it was known as "Circus Agonalis".

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Piazza Navona

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

On these lists

From the encyclopaedia