Fountain of Neptune

Listen first. Before you look at anything, let the sound reach you. Water falls into a wide stone basin, steady and soft, under the voices of the square. A street painter scrapes a palette knife. Someone laughs near the café tables. The paving under your feet is uneven, smoothed by centuries of shoes. You are standing at the northern end of Piazza Navona, in front of the Fountain of Neptune. Most visitors walk past it on their way to the center of the square. Today, we stop here.

Look at the shape of the square around you. It is long and narrow, with one rounded end. That is not a design choice from the Renaissance. It is a ghost. In the first century, the Emperor Domitian built a stadium here for athletic contests. Over the centuries, the stands became foundations for houses, and the open track became the piazza. When you walk the length of this square, you are walking along an ancient Roman racetrack.

The square has three fountains, lined up along its length. In the middle stands the Fountain of the Four Rivers, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the great sculptor of Baroque Rome. At the southern end is the Fountain of the Moor. And here, at the northern end, is Neptune. Together, they turn this space into a long promenade of moving water. Of the three, this fountain has the strangest story. It waited a very long time to be finished.

The basin came first. It was designed by Giacomo della Porta, an architect who shaped many of Rome's fountains in the late sixteenth century. Pope Gregory the Thirteenth commissioned it, and the work was completed in the 1570s. Della Porta gave Rome a clean, elegant basin. But he gave it no statues. For nearly three hundred years, this fountain was simply a basin of water, with nothing standing in it at all.

In those centuries, it did not even carry the name of Neptune. Romans called it the Fountain of the Calderari. The calderari were the coppersmiths, the makers of pots and cauldrons. Their workshops filled a nearby street, and the sound of hammers on metal was part of daily life here. So for a long time, this was a working neighbourhood fountain, named after the craftsmen who lived beside it.

Now here is the first surprise. The statues you see today are not Baroque at all. They are from the nineteenth century. After the unification of Italy, the city decided the empty basin needed decoration. A competition was held in the 1870s, and the sculptures were installed in 1878. So while Bernini's fountain behind you dates from the seventeenth century, Neptune arrived more than two hundred years later. Many visitors assume all three fountains are the same age. They are not.

Look at the central figure. That is Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, carved by the sculptor Antonio Della Bitta. He is not standing calmly with a trident, as he does in many fountains. He is in a fight. His body twists, and his muscles strain. Wrapped around him is an octopus, its arms coiling against his legs. Neptune drives his weapon down into the creature. It is a scene of struggle, not of triumph already won.

Around the edge, you will find a second group of figures. These were made by another sculptor, Gregorio Zappalà. Look for the Nereids, the sea nymphs of Greek and Roman myth, who were said to live in the depths and help sailors. Beside them are small cherubs and sea creatures, splashing and wrestling in the water. Walk slowly around the whole basin. Each figure faces a different direction, so the fountain changes as you move.

Notice how the sculptors respected the older work. The nineteenth-century figures sit inside Della Porta's sixteenth-century basin. They did not replace it. They added to it. This is very typical of Rome. The city rarely throws anything away. A Roman stadium becomes a square. A coppersmiths' fountain becomes a home for a sea god. Each generation builds on top of the last one.

The water itself has a long history too. The fountains of Piazza Navona are fed by the Acqua Vergine, a water line whose origins go back to ancient Rome. The same source also supplies some of the city's other well-known fountains. So the water in front of you has travelled a long way underground, along a route that Romans have relied on for a very long time.

Here is the second surprise. For around two centuries, this square was sometimes turned into a lake. On summer weekends, the drains of the fountains were blocked, and water spread across the lower paving. Aristocrats rode through it in their carriages. Ordinary Romans watched from the edges and splashed in the shallows. It was a public festival, a way to cool off in the heat. Imagine the whole piazza shining with water, right where you are standing.

One small warning for confused visitors. Rome has more than one Fountain of Neptune. Another one stands in Piazza del Popolo, near the northern gate of the city. If someone gives you directions, make sure they mean the one in Piazza Navona. This fountain is the one at the end of the long, rounded square, just steps from the café tables and the painters.

Before you leave, turn around and look down the length of the piazza. You can see the obelisk rising above Bernini's fountain, and beyond it, the curved church front of Sant'Agnese in Agone, designed by Francesco Borromini. In the afternoon, the buildings glow in shades of ochre, orange, and soft pink. Street artists set up their easels. Musicians play near the benches. This square is still a stage, as it was when chariots raced here.

Now look back at Neptune once more. The octopus is still holding on. The god is still pushing down. The water keeps falling into the old basin, as it has for over four centuries. As you walk away, listen for how the sound of the fountain fades behind you, and the sound of the next one begins. That is the rhythm of this square. Water, then voices, then water again.