Piazza Navona, Rome

Piazza Navona is a beautiful square full of activity. There are beautiful fountains, cafe, street artists selling their artwork, the church of the Sacred heart and lots of people. Weenjoyed sitting at Tres Scalini and enjoying some Tartufo before wandering about the Piazza and checking out the fountains which are incredible. The street artista had some nice painting and interesting work to sell. There was even an artist whose medium was spray paint. He was making all sorts of interesting pictures with some stencils, spray paint and an sponge.

This was a great place to walk around and take in all the activity surrounding us.

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Piazza Navona was our rest stop on our short trip across Rome with ViaTour, which was included when we booked two nights at our hotel. This was the third stop on the tour, immediately following our visit to the Pantheon. The center of Navona is Bernini's masterpiece Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, The Fountain of Four Rivers, erected on June 12, 1651. Lot's of renovation going on while we were there, but the stunning beauty of the piazza and fountain were not lost. In addition to the charm of the piazza, we were able to take a moment to use the restroom and grab a drink and gelato, and rest a bit before we got back on the bus and drove to the Vatican.

Marcel is usually to be found nearer the Southern end of Piazza Navona, just towards the centre. He has a ghetto blaster to acoompany his tiny troupe of dancers so let your ears lead you. He very comically looks disinterestedly askance as his finger puppets shake their respective thang. His repertoire 2004 included The Tramp/Chaplin & the girl (picture), bossanova, the Can Can and the piece de resistance Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal (this doll has a bizarre white ping pong ball head and moonwalks). DVD was worth the EU10 as a souvenir

This July 2005 tip was updated 8 February 2009 with the new website link

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Piazza Navona was my favorite of the squares. It is alive and electric at night, filled with shoppers, vendors and lovers. The Four Rivers Fountain in the center of the square is exquisite and the architecture of the surrounding buildings amazing.

I could wander around this square and through the adjacent streets for hours.

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Piazza Navona is my preferred square in Rome but at the time of my visit in December 2007 I felt extremely disappointed by the way she looked.

First of all the large central fountain “Fontana dei Fiumi” of Bernin was in restoration. This marvellous fountain was hidden behind panels with some glazed openings. The unhappy tourist could only see some sculptures supported by scaffolding.
Since the summer of 2008 the marvellous central fountain is again visible, a great relief for those who love this piazza like me and were disappointed by what they saw.

My disappointment did not stop there, in December the beautiful perspective of the Piazza Navona is destroyed by fairground stalls mixing a fun fair and a kind of Christmas market without anything of the charm of the Christmas markets of Germany or Alsace.
Don't expect to sit at the nice terraces of the cafes or restaurants; they look at the back of the shacks.

On a sunny Sunday in February 2008 I came back with my wife. The last time she had been on the Piazza Navona was in the early nineties. Although the December fairground was gone she also felt very disappointed. She discovered in the sixties what was once a so romantic piazza. Now all romantic has gone at Piazza Navona and has left room for a commercial market.

Of course this is a personal totally subjective appreciation of persons who have seen this piazza before the great tourist invasion. I'm sure that most first visitors love the present lively Piazza Navona. Elder visitors have found other, still hidden, romantic places in Rome.

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Note - May 2008.
From comments received from much younger people than myself (so not influenced by romantic souvenirs of thirty or forty years ago) my disappointment appears to be shared not only because of the works at the main fountain but also because of the somewhat "seedy" aspect of the piazza.

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Moor Fountain (Fontana del Moro) is the end result of the work done by Giacomo della Porta and Bernini.

The tank of the fountain was tank was realized by Giacomo della Porta in 1576. Olimpia Maidalchini asked Bernini to come up with a design that would complement the work done by Giacomo della Porta on the tank of the fountain. Bernini came up with a design that shows the fight between the Ethiopian and the dolphin. The fountain as it stands today was complete in 1654.

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The fountain of Neptune (Fontana di Nettuno) it is also known as the Fountain of the Boilermakers. and it was sculpted by Giacomo della Porta in 1574. The fountain is located in the North side of Piazza Navona and it shows Neptune fighting with an octopus.

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The Fountain of the 4 Rivers (Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi) was executed by a large group of workers under the supervision of Lorenzo Bernini. Work on the fountain started in 1648 and it came to completion in 1651.

The fountain stands in the middle of Piazza Navona and you can easily identify it by the huge Egyptian obelisk that marks the middle of the piazza and of the fountain.

The fountain represents the four continents and their rivers. The obelisk in the center is the symbol of Christ and the triumphing Roman Catholic Church over the whole world.
The figure of Nile, sculpted by Jacopo Antonio Fancelli, represents Africa. The Danube, by Antonio Raggi, represents Europe. The Ganges, by Claude Poussin, represents Asia. The Plate, by Francesco Baratta, represents the Americas (discovered a century and a half earlier).