Caravaggio Privately in Three Hours, Popolo to Montecitorio

Three hours, a private guide, and four churches and palaces holding Caravaggio's Roman work, walked in a line from Piazza del Popolo south into the centre. The technique is the subject. Caravaggio painted from models he found in the street, lit them from a single high source and let everything else go black, which is why a figure in one of his canvases seems to be standing in a room you cannot see. It was new, it was copied across Europe within twenty years, and the churches that commissioned the paintings still have them on the walls they were sized for. The route also takes in the Baroque that grew out of him: Borromini's Sant'Agnese and Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers facing each other across Piazza Navona, Sant'Ignazio and its square, and the facade Bernini designed for what is now the Chamber of Deputies. Being private, the pace and the emphasis are set by whoever is on the walk, which makes it workable for a family with children as well as for two people who want to spend twenty minutes in one chapel.