Private Squares and Fountains Walk, Popolo to the Pantheon

Piazza del Popolo, Roma

You meet your private guide in Piazza del Popolo, near the lions fountain. The guide holds a board with your surname on it, under the obelisk in the centre of the square, where the fountain is.

Piazza del Popolo

Piazza del Popolo takes its name not from the people but from the poplars that once ringed the oval. The neo-classical square as it stands was laid out between 1811 and 1822, and its job was to receive travellers and pilgrims arriving in Rome from the north along the Via Flaminia.

Via Del Corso

Via del Corso runs about 1.6 kilometres from Piazza Venezia to Piazza del Popolo and is the central arm of the three-street fan known as the Trident.

Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps climb from Piazza di Spagna at the bottom to Piazza Trinità dei Monti at the top, under the church of the same name. There are 135 steps, built between 1723 and 1725 with 20,000 scudi left for the purpose by the French diplomat Etienne Gueffier, and designed by Francesco de Sanctis and Alessandro Specchi. They connect a church under French royal patronage at the top with the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See at the bottom, which explains the name and the confusion.

Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain, an eighteenth-century work in the Trevi district, designed by the architect Nicola Salvi.

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Fontana del Pantheon

The Pantheon, in the Pigna district, was built as a temple to all the gods, past, present and to come. The first one on this site was founded in 27 BC by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus.

Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona is among the best known monumental squares in Rome, given its present form by the Pamphilj family under Pope Innocent X.

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

Pope Innocent X commissioned the fountain while the Palazzo Pamphilj was going up on the same square. In 1647 he had Francesco Borromini design a conduit to bring water from the Aqua Virgo to Piazza Navona, and announced a competition for the fountain itself. He also wanted the obelisk, later called the Agonale, recovered from the ruins of the circus of Maxentius on the Via Appia Antica.

Piazza della Minerva

The square is named after a temple that stood here, built by Pompey the Great and dedicated to Minerva Chalcidica, whose cult statue is now in the Vatican. The basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which anchors the square, appears as early as the eighth century in the itinerary of the Anonymous of Einsiedeln, as Sanctae Mariae in Minervio.

Pantheon

Your guide leaves you at the Pantheon at the end of the walk.

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