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Recommended
tours in Rome
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Fancy
a tour that is a little out of the ordinary? Forget palazzi,
museums and hills, and think&fountains!! By visiting the
famous fountains in the city, you will learn some history,
become an art critic and appreciate the beauty of some of
the loveliest piazzas in the "Citt?Eterna". Rome
has a great number of fountains in various shapes and sizes,
of varying beauty and of varying fame. This large number is
due to the fact that fontane have always been
considered to be the best possible embellishment to the
city, adornments 'par excellence'. Some of the elegant
fountains are simply for decoration, but thankfully, almost
every piazza and many streets have nasoni or 'Roman
noses' these are small fountains made of cast iron,
offering drinkable water.
Many of the most famous fountains in Rome are located in the
centre of the city and were designed and built by Gian
Lorenzo Bernini, one of the greatest sculptors and
architects of the seventeenth century, who was also a town
planner and left signs of his brilliance throughout Rome.
The first fountain by Bernini is the Barcaccia, which
is located at the foot of the steps of Trinit?dei Monti in
Piazza di Spagna. In the summer evenings, the steps are
filled with Romans and tourists who relax and enjoy one
another's company. Some of the city's most fashionable
boutiques are located in the streets that surround the
piazza. The fountain dates from 1627-29 and was commissioned
by Pope Urbano VIII Barberini, and is decorated with
Barberinian apes in his honour. The fountain's design is
based on an enormous ship that is slowly sinking; it was
created in memory of those who lost their lives when the
Tevere flooded the entire area at the end of the sixteenth
century. In reality, the fountain was the work of Pietro
Bernini, father of the more famous Gian Lorenzo, whose son
collaborated on this work.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the exclusive designer of the
Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini between 1642 and
1643. This fountain represents a Triton in a shell
surrounded by four dolphins. With this work, Bernini sought
to symbolise the power of Pope Barberini. There is another
fountain by the same artist, in the square, this is the
Fontana delle Api, which was built at around the same time
as Fontana del Tritone. It was dismantled in 1880 and
reconstructed in 1917 at the crossroads of Via Veneto and
Via di S. Basilio. Unfortunately, the current version is not
much like the original and only part of the fountain can be
said to be authentic. Bernini's most famous fountain is the
Quattro Fiumi, which stands at the centre of Piazza Navona.
It was built in marble and travertine stone between 1648 and
1651, and is said to be the most beautiful fountain in Rome,
which accounts for its fame. The four statues decorating the
Quattro Fiumi represent four rivers, symbols of the four
parts of the world that were known at that time. The Danube
is Europe, The Nile is Africa, the Ganges is Asia and Rio
represents the Americas. At the south end of the square
stands another fountain that was designed by Bernini, and
built by Antonio Mari in 1653. Mari was extremely loyal to
the creator's design of the Fontana del Moro, (the Moor's
fountain). The fountain takes its name from the triton with
African features who stands fighting a dolphin amidst the
seas.
The Trevi Fountain (located in Piazza Trevi) is one of the
most famous fountains in the world, not least because of the
scene from Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita when
the beautiful Anita Ekberg mesmorises the equally
good-looking Marcello Mastroianni. It is said that if you
throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain that you
will certainly return to Rome one day. The Trevi fountain
was created by Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, but was not
completed until a century later (c.1751) when Nicola Salvi
was commissioned to finish the work. The fountain itself is
a delicious confection of columns, horses, Tritons and
Neptune. If you happen to be strolling through the streets
of Rome during the summer (at around 2 or 3 am), you are
likely to come across vagrants (barboni) retrieving
coins from the fountain!
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