Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona is Rome's great open-air living room: painters, street musicians, café terraces and three fountains in a row. Its long shape reproduces that of the Stadium of Domitian, from the 1st century, on whose stands the houses were built. If you leave by the north end for Piazza di Tor Sanguigna, you'll see remains of its arches several metres below street level.

1A pope's square

In the mid-17th century Pope Innocent X, of the Pamphili family, who had his palace here, turned the square into a showcase for his dynasty. He commissioned from Bernini the Fountain of the Four Rivers, finished in 1651 and crowned by a Roman-era obelisk brought from the Circus of Maxentius on the Via Appia. The four giants stand for the great rivers of the continents then known: the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the Río de la Plata. Beside the fountain are the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, with its façade by Borromini, and Palazzo Pamphilj, now the Brazilian embassy.

2The other two fountains

At either end are two older fountains, designed by Giacomo della Porta in the late 16th century. The southern one is called the Fountain of the Moor, after the central figure added in the 1650s to a design by Bernini. The northern one, the Fountain of Neptune, had no statues until 1878, when the group of the god wrestling an octopus was put in place.

In December the square hosts a traditional Christmas market, with sweets, nativity scenes and the Befana, the good witch who brings presents on 6 January.

3What to look for

• The animals on the Fountain of the Four Rivers: a horse, a lion, an armadillo and a sea serpent.
• The Moor wrestling a dolphin, in the southern fountain.
• Palazzo Pamphilj, flying the Brazilian flag, next to Sant'Agnese.