Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti, Rome

The Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti rises as a monumental stairway, with one hundred and thirty-five steps climbing from Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti. Francesco de Sanctis won the design competition held in seventeen seventeen, after decades of argument over how to shape this steep hillside. The project had been delayed by disputes over a French diplomat’s bequest and by plans that proposed an equestrian monument to Louis the Fourteenth.

Let your gaze travel along the broad, branching flights: this is theatrical urban design, turning a difficult slope into a public stage. The church above was under French Bourbon patronage, while the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See occupied Palazzo Monaldeschi beside the piazza below; those rival presences explain why this staircase carries such an international character. At the foot, the Barcaccia fountain dates from the early Baroque period and was built between sixteen twenty-seven and sixteen twenty-nine.

The staircase has endured repeated restoration; its recent renewal treated travertine, brick, marble, and plaster, before reopening in September twenty sixteen. It also became a screen landmark when Roman Holiday brought Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck here.