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Piazza San Pietro - St. Peter's Square | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The
fact, alone, that the great and truly unique Basilica of St. Peter's
in Vatican faces out on this square wonld make it perhaps the most
widely known of Roman piazzas. But above and beyond this, the space
itself merits at-tention for its size (an enormous ellipse whose
greatest di-ameter measures 240 m.) and the brilliant project by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini whose scope was that of singling out this square
from all others throngh the use of the imposing porticoes. These
porticoes are arranged in semicircles along the short sides of the
square and consist of four parallel rows of Tuscan-Doric columns
which provide a choice of three paths. Above the canonic entablature
are 140 colossal statues of Saints, as well as the insignia of the
patron pope, Alexander VII. At the center of the square, the plain
obelisk, flanked by two fountains, stands at the crossing of the
two diameters of the ellipse. Termed " aguglia " (needle)
in the Middle Ages, the obelisk came from Heliopolis and was brought
to Rome by the em-peror Caligula, and set on the spina of Nero's
Circus,which is where St. Peter's in Vatican now stands. Throughout
the various phases of restoration, destruc-tion, and reconstruction,
the " aguglia " stayed next to the Basilica and was not
set up at the center of the square until 1586 by Domenico Fontana,
who also saw to the en-ginecring aspect of the undertaking. The
other architect, Carlo Fontana, designed the left-handiountain in
Piazza San Pietro, built in 1677 as a pendant to the one on the
right designed by Carlo Maderno about fifty years earli-er. A curious
fact concerning the obelisk mentioned above is that it was used,
or was believed to have been used in the Middle Ages, as a reliquary
for the ashes of Caesar, and then (up to now) for a fragment of
the Holy Cross. |
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| Piazza Navona | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The
most famous square of Baroque Rome stands on the site of Domitian’s
stadium and the name seems to derive from a popular corruption of
the term for the competitive games “in agone” which were held here.
From the times of Domitian on, the place was used almost exclusively
for sports events, including the famous August regatta in which
the participants wore the colours of the nobles and the civic clergy.
Even now the feast of the Befana (January sixth) is celebrated there
with a typical market. But the real attraction of the square is the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, dated 1651, and thanks to which the artist gained the admiration and protection of the Pope then in office, Innocent X. The rivers represented in the fountain are the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the Rio de la Plata. They are arranged on a steep rocky reef from which a Roman obelisk taken from the Circus of Maxentius daringly rises up into the air. Popular tradition has it that the sculptures on the fountain symbolize the rivalry between Bernini and Borromini, who were the most important artists in 17th century Rome. Innocent X at first had commissioned the work to Borromini, but Bernini obtained the commission by “corrupting” Donna Olimpia, the pope’s sister-in-law (he gave her a silver copy of the project). In line with the Fountain of the Four Rivers are the Fountain of the Moor, in front of the Palazzo Pamphilij and the Fountain of Neptune, formerly of the Calderari, at the northern end of the square. |
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| Piazza di Spagna | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The square is one of the characteristic spots of the city and offers a splendid panorama on the center of Rome. Dominated by the façade of the church of the Trinità dei Monti, built in 1502 and consecrated in 1587 by Sisto V, that made of it a focal point of his ambitious urbanistic plan. From here began the Via Felice, then Sistina, straight road that led pilgrims to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. In the middle of the square rises the obelisk point of convergence of different roads. Roman imitation of the Egyptian obelisks, it dates back to the Imperial age, it came from the Gardens of Sallustio, but it was put here as element of link between the church and the stairway. The hieroglyphs were carved in Rome imitating those of the obelisk of Piazza del Popolo. At the corner formed by the convergence of Sistina Street and Gregorian Street stands Palazzetto Zuccari, planned by Federico Zuccari and known with the appellative of "house of the monsters" because the windows on the sides are modelled on mouths of monsters. Here lived the queen of Poland Maria Sobiesky.Proscenium to the church is the monumental stairway of the church Trinità dei Monti planned in 1726 by Francesco De Sanctis and realized completely in travertine marble. He chose as reference and for inspiration the number three, in honour of the church of the Trinity, De Sanctis created a flight of steps divided in three parts which unite and then converge immediately in two opposite directions in an alternation of convexity and concavity of the walls, of the staircases and of its squares. Since1951 in April andMay a great exhibition of azaleas gives to the stairway a particular fascination |
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| Piazza del Popolo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| It
represents the point of confluence of three important streets:
via del Corso, via del Babuino and via di Ripetta. It is characterized
by the Porta del Popolo by Bernini, which was the most important
entrance in Rome for travellers coming from the north through
the consular Flaminia road. |
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| Campo de Fiori | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Two blocks south of C.V. Emanuele II (on P. della Cancelleria or V.d. Paradiso) stands Rome's most frenetic piazza, Campo dei Fiori, a bustling marketplace during the day that turns into a bustling meatmarket of drunken young foreigners when the sun goes down. Until papal rule ended in 1869, the area was the site of countless executions. In the middle of the Campo, a statue commemorates the death of its most famous victim: Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who rises above the bustle with his arms folded over a book. Scientifically and philosophically out of sync with his time, Bruno sizzled at the stake in 1600 for taking Copernicus one step too far: he argued that the universe had no center at all, and also tried to legitimize magic. Now the only carcasses that litter the piazza are those of the fish in the colorful market. |
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