Fountains & Talking statues- Rome, Italy

Rome's love affair with fountains dates back to the city's ancient past. With their mastery of water engineering, the city's water supply was both constant and bounteous - and with suffiicient pressure to power the most sophisticated display fountains. Eleven great aquaducts fed into the city, each terminating at a grand nymphaeum - a richly ornamented fountain from whence subsidiary water lines fed public and private supplies. With the fall of Rome, the water system fell into decay and only a few fragments remain to remind us of the magnificence of these early fountains.

It was to be another thousand years before the city was again adorned with beautiful fountains to equal those of the past. Now there are hundred of them, of all shapes and sizes, as symbolic of the city as the ruins of the past, the countless churches and the sentinel pines. All fountains have their own beauty, but some are definitely more beautiful than others and warrant seeking out especially.

The Turtle Fountain on Piazza Mattei in the Jewish Ghetto area is one that takes a little searching for but, oh, is it worth it! Completed in 1585 to a design by Giacomo della Porta, though the turtles that give it its name were an addition by Bernini a hundred years later, it is just so lovely - the more so because the square it graces is a small and intimate space.

Piazza Navona is anything but small and intimate, it's big enough to have three fountains. Unfortunately, the central one - Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers - was under wraps as it is being restored, all we could see was its obelisk sticking up above the hoarding, but at the south end of the piazza, the Fountain of the Moor (another della Porta/Bernini combination - Bernini added the "Moor" to the centre of the fountain when it was restored in 1654) is quite splendid despite the original tritons surrounding Bernini's Moor being removed to the Villa Borghese and being replaced with 19th century copies.
The piazza's third fountain - the Neptune - is a 19th century creation.

You take your life in your hands trying to get up close to the Triton Fountain in Piazza Barberini - this piazza is definitely not a traffic-free zone. Be brave - the fountain's gorgeous, another Bernini masterpiece - his first in the city, created in 1643 to mark the restoration of the ancient Aqua Felice aqueduct.

It may not be a Baroque masterpiece, but the Fountain of the Naiads in Piazza Repubblica, caused an uproar in the city when it was unveiled in 1901. The naiads were totally naked! and they were recognised identities - actresses!! and, true to the Art Nouveau aesthetic of the time, they were so sinuous, and playful, and downright sexy. What a scandal! The good citizens of Rome were appalled, the local lads loved them and carriages circling the fountain were a traffic hazard. Should they be removed? Art won over prudery and the sculptures stayed. This is not the nicest piazza in Rome, and the fountain's no masterpiece, but do take a moment to check out the girls in their watery playground.

Fountains & Talking statues, Rome

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Fountains & Talking statues, Rome

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