Rome Bucket List Walk from Piazza del Popolo, Gelato Included

A walk through Baroque Rome that starts at the top of the centre and works down through the squares and fountains, with a gelato at the end. It begins at the monument in the middle of Piazza del Popolo and takes in the Spanish Steps, built in the 1720s to link the square at the bottom with the French monastery at the top, then the Trevi Fountain, then the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods raised nearly two thousand years ago and still standing with its roof on. At Piazza Navona the guide tells the story of the feud between Bernini and Borromini, the two architects who shaped seventeenth-century Rome and could not stand each other. The tale that the Nile figure on Bernini's fountain shields its eyes from Borromini's church front is one of the best known in the city, and the dates do not support it: the fountain was finished before Borromini took over the church. It is a better story than it is a fact, and both halves are worth having. The walk ends there, with a gelato from one of the better gelaterie and a guide who lives in the city and will tell you where to eat.