Piazza Navona, Rome

Piazza Navona stretches around you as a long oval public square, preserving the footprint of an ancient sports arena. In the early imperial era, Emperor Domitian built a stadium here in eighty AD; Romans gathered there for athletic contests, and its association with games gave the place its earlier name, Circus Agonalis. The arena later decayed and supplied stone for other construction, yet its unusual outline endured.

The square became civic space near the close of the fifteenth century, when Rome’s market arrived from the Campidoglio. Its great theatrical transformation came under Pope Innocent the Tenth, whose Pamphili family made this piazza a Baroque display ground: Baroque means architecture designed for drama, movement, and spectacle. The family palace faces the square, while Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers, completed in sixteen fifty-one, occupies the central space before Sant’Agnese in Agone.

An obelisk crowns the fountain; it was brought here in fragments from the Circus of Maxentius. The fountains punctuate the oval. At the southern end, the Fountain of the Moor combines Giacomo della Porta’s basin and Tritons with Bernini’s later figure wrestling a dolphin.

Neptune’s fountain marks the northern end. This was once a place of summer play as well: during August weekends over more than two centuries, water flooded the piazza for Pamphili celebrations.