The Secret Lives of Bernini, Borromini and Caravaggio

Rome in the Baroque century was a small professional world where everyone knew everyone and the competition was personal. Bernini and Borromini worked on the same buildings and hated each other. Caravaggio painted altarpieces and killed a man. This walk goes through the historic centre looking for both halves of that: the squares where the masterpieces are, and the streets and houses where the rest of it happened. The route takes in the Temple of Hadrian and its eleven surviving columns, the false dome that Andrea Pozzo painted flat on the ceiling of Sant'Ignazio, the dome of the Pantheon and Raphael's tomb, the Caravaggios in San Luigi dei Francesi and the Madonna dei Pellegrini in Sant'Agostino, then Piazza Navona with Bernini's fountains and Borromini's church facing each other across it. It ends at Pasquino, the statue Romans have been sticking anonymous complaints to for five centuries, and finishes in Piazza Fiammetta in front of the House of Fiammetta. Fights, secrets, blood, passion, rivalry and courtesans are all part of the story, which is a fair summary of how these men actually lived.