Stroll of the Artists in Rome: Best Squares & Fountains Tour

Our tour begins in what is perhaps the city’s most famous public space, for centuries known as Rome’s ‘drawing room’ – Piazza Navona. The space began life as the Stadium of Domitian in the first century A.D: its distinctive form has been preserved for nearly 2,000 years, and is still obvious even today. And yet at the same time we are in the heart of the Roman Baroque: all around are spectacular optical illusions and theatrical buildings, signs of a revolutionary new approach to architectural space . Here we’ll confront the twin genius of Bernini and Borromini, the two greatest rivals of their age and opposites in every respect. Bernini’s marvelous Fountain of the Four Rivers is the piazza’s centrepiece, a pyramidal structure that incorporates an obelisk and culminates in the flight of a dove. Dominating the skyline above is Borromini’s curving facade and bell tower of the church of Santa Agnese, where stone takes on the malleability of softest clay.

In Piazza di Spagna meanwhile, we’ll find ourselves at the foot of the no less iconic Spanish Steps. Here we will learn the history of the church of the Trinita’ dei Monti that towers above, as well as why the young Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his sculptor father adopted the unusual subject of a boat for the fountain of the Barcaccia. We will also uncover the social significance of the majestic stairway that came to unite these two areas separated for centuries by a high cliff. After short stops at the Colonna del’Immacolata (Column of the Immaculate Conception) and the house of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, we will reach another of the city’s most indelible landmarks, the Trevi fountain.

Here we will let ourselves be lulled by the magical song of the waters, immersing ourselves in this wonderful piece of theatrical architecture that both recalls the great buildings of the past and allows us to imagine the impossible architecture of the mind. With the help of your guide you will read the many legends written in the relief sculpture of the triumphal arch, where the god Ocean advances with his Tritons and winged horses to celebrate with us an ancient festival of water.

The Pantheon transports us to another era, and expresses the full grandeur of Imperial Rome. Innovate ideas, technologies and various cultures blend to make an artwork of extreme power and poetry, a design so perfect that Michelangelo considered it to be the work of angels. The history of the area is no less fascinating: it was originally a marshland subject to the floods of the Tiber, then a military training ground devoted to Mars, the god of war. The temple that dominates the piazza was first built by Agrippa for his son-in-law Augustus, before a restoration by Hadrian in 126 AD created the magnificent building we know today.