Piazza del Popolo

The "People's Square" marks the northern edge of the tourist's Rome, anchoring the tridente neighborhood and flanked by the amazing church of Santa Maria del Popolo and above it, the greenery of Villa Borghese park

* Piazza del Popolo
Piazza del Popolo

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Teh lion fountains on Piazza del Popolo
The lion fountains around the obelisk on Piazza del Popolo (looking north).This huge oval space, filling a basin between the banks of the Tiber River and the terraced 19th century Pincio Gardens leading up to Villa Borghese Park, once formed part of the gardens belonging to Nero's family—and is said to hide the site where they secretly buried the crazed and despised emperor after he committed suicide.

Snuggled into the north end of the piazza is the amazing church of Santa Maria del Popolo, crammed with art and architectural works by Caravaggio, Bernini, Raphael, and Pinturicchio yet long overlooked by most Rome visitors (it's finally getting a trickle of tourists thanks to—of all things—a starring role in Dan Brown's Angels & Demons).

The obelisk and how Sixtus V remade Rome

The obelisk and "twin" churches of Piazza del Popolo (looking south).
The obelisk and "twin" churches of Piazza del Popolo (looking south).Piazza del Popolo is pinned at the center by the ancient Egyptian obelisk of Ramses II, now surrounded by a quartet of lions sending sheets of water splashing into basins at their paws. A spoil of ancient wars, the obelisk was originally placed by Constantine at the Circus Maximus, then dragged up and installed here in 1589 by order of Pope Sixtus V.

This was all a part of Sixtus V's grand civil engineering project to remake Rome from a medieval town into the largely Renaissance and baroque city we know today.

He created new squares across Rome, each anchored (usually) by an ancient obelisk like this one, and then linked them all in with a web of new major streets—almost always having three major roads branching from each square to symbolize the Trinity. In the process, he created the first modern city of Europe.

Piazza del Popolo is the classic and easiest-to-see example of this model of urban planning. Off the south side of the piazza, between the two tiny "twin" churches (which are not actually identical at all if you look closely), sprouts the trio of boulevards that make up the Tridente neighborhood: Via del Corso (Rome's "Main St."), Via del Babuino (leading to the Spanish Steps), and Via della Ripetta (leading to the Ara Pacis and Augustus' Mausoleum).

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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

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