10 Facts about Piazza Navona
| Rolling Rome
Dominitian’s ancient stadium, in the heart of the city, is now adorned with fine Renaissance and Baroque buildings, designed by the most famous architects of the 16C and 17C. The breathtaking magnificence of the piazza was meant to show the authority of Pamphili family, who had their own palace facing the square. The piazza is one of Rome’s liveliest squares, full of tourists, portrait painters, vendors, musicians, mime artists , shops and restaurants.
- Piazza Navona is considered one of Rome’s most beautiful squares. It displays the genius of Bernini, Boromini and Giacomo della Porta with its three amazing fountains and a church. The fountain of the moor, the Fountain of Neptune and the eye catcher in the middle is the Fountain of the four rivers, which is considered Bernini’s masterpiece. Right across the middle fountain you can find yourself in front of the impressive Sant’ Agnese in Agone Church, designed by Boromini and dedicated to the young Christian virgin Agnese, who was executed at the site of the church, because of her beliefs.
- In 86 AD Domitian had a stadium built at the site of the square (Stadio di Domiziano). The stadium was used mostly for the athletic purposes, contests of wit and physical fitness. The stadium was a grand edifice, which had a rectangular shape with rounded short sides. It was completely covered in white marble and could seated up to 30,000 people. There are still remains beneath the square. The stadium was paved over in the 15th century and the Piazza Navona was created.
- The Fountain of the moor or the fontana del Moro, is located in the southern end of the square and takes its name from the group of figures representing an Ethiopian fighting with a dolphin. The work was sculptured in 1654 to a Bernini design. The masks and sculptures of the tritons are copies of the originals which can now be seen in the gardens of the Villa Borghese.
- The Fountain of Neptune or Fontana del Nettuno , is located at the northern end of the piazza. This fountain was commissioned to Giacomo della Porta in 1574, and as with the Fontana del Moro on the southern end, the material used was Portasanta, which is a rose marble. Della Porta’s designed the two fountains to be similar in appearance, with tritons and large masks, but the project was never completed and for about 300 years the fountain remained undecorated. Finally in 1878, Antonio Della Bitta was commissioned to carve the statue of Neptune slaying a giant octopus, and Gregorio Zappala carved the group of 8 sea figures playing in the basin, two sea horses, two cherubs, two dolphins, and two Nereids or sea nymphs, and so the fountain was renamed, Fountain of Neptune.
