Spanish Steps

Interesting facts

In 1986 the opening of Italy's first McDonald's near the steps spurred Carlo Petrini and friends to found the group that grew into the Slow Food movement.

Drawings from the 1580s show that Pope Gregory XIII was already considering a staircase up to the newly finished façade of the French church.

Étienne Gueffier's 1660 bequest for the stairs was contested by a nephew who claimed half of it, and the project then lay dormant for decades.

For a long time the winning design was attributed to Alessandro Specchi; very little is known about Francesco de Sanctis, the architect who actually won.

The divided, symmetrical flights borrow from Bramante's stairs for the Belvedere Courtyard and Michelangelo's shaped steps in the Laurentian Library vestibule.

Only a few decades after completion, the French writers Joseph de Lalande and Charles de Brosses were already noting that the steps were in poor condition.

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck were filmed on the steps for Roman Holiday (1953), and they also appear in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).

The car chase down the steps in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was shot on a studio replica, yet the film premiered on the real steps in 2023.

In 2008 the artist Graziano Cecchini sent hundreds of thousands of multicoloured plastic balls bouncing down the steps as a protest action.

At Christmas a 19th-century nativity scene is set up on the first landing of the staircase.

Why it is worth it

The Spanish Steps are Rome's great outdoor staircase, climbing a steep 29-metre slope from the Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti on the shoulder of the Pincian Hill. The idea is much older than the stairs: popes and French diplomats argued for generations about how to link the French church above with the square below, and a French diplomat's bequest of 1660 and Cardinal Mazarin's plans, which included an equestrian statue of Louis XIV, came to nothing. The design that was finally built came from a competition of 1717 won by Francesco de Sanctis. Work began with French money in 1721, and Pope Benedict XIII inaugurated the stairway for the Jubilee of 1725.

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. The name comes from the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See in a palace at the foot of the steps, but the carving tells a Franco-papal story: the fleur-de-lys of the Bourbon kings is carefully balanced against the eagle and crown of Pope Innocent XIII. In spring, around Rome's birthday on 21 April, part of the steps is lined with pots of azaleas.

At the foot of the steps is the Barcaccia, a low fountain shaped like a half-sunken boat, built in 1627–29 and usually credited to Pietro Bernini, father of Gian Lorenzo. Local legend says Pope Urban VIII commissioned it after a boat was washed up here by a Tiber flood. On the right-hand corner as you start to climb stands the house where John Keats died in 1821, now a museum of the English Romantic poets. At the top, the steps open onto the terrace in front of Trinità dei Monti, and a short walk leads on to the Villa Medici and the gardens of the Pincio. City rules forbid eating on the steps, and sitting on them can bring a fine.

Getting there

The steps are in the historic centre of Rome, at the end of Via dei Condotti. Spagna station on Metro Line A opens right beside the Piazza di Spagna. The nearest airport is Rome Ciampino (CIA), about 15 km away.

Spanish Steps

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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