Rome's Squares with a Licensed Guide, Venezia to Popolo

Seven squares in one line, walked north from Piazza Venezia to Piazza del Popolo, with a licensed guide. In Italy that qualification is a state exam and a regional licence, which is the difference between someone who may legally guide you inside a monument and someone who may not. The walk starts under two balconies on the same square. One is the balcony Mussolini spoke from, on Palazzo Venezia. The other belonged to Letizia Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother, who spent the last twenty years of her life in Rome watching her son's empire come apart from a window a hundred metres away. The Altare della Patria stands between them. From there the route runs up Via del Corso to Piazza Navona and Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, past the Pantheon, then to the Spanish Steps with Trinità dei Monti above and the Barcaccia below, on to the Trevi Fountain, and out into Piazza del Popolo where the walk ends. The stories rather than the dates are the point. Each square is a piece of a different century, and the guide connects them in the order you walk them.