Trinità dei Monti

Listen for a moment before you look up. Below you, there is the low murmur of hundreds of voices, the scuff of shoes on travertine, and the soft splash of a fountain. Above, two bell towers rise against the sky. Between them, a pale facade catches the Roman light. This is Trinità dei Monti, the church that crowns the Spanish Steps. For most visitors, it is the backdrop to a photograph. But this church came first. The famous staircase was built to reach it.

The story begins with France, not Spain. In 1502, the French king Louis the Twelfth sponsored a church and convent here, on the slope of the Pincian Hill. It was meant for the Minims, a strict religious order founded by Saint Francis of Paola. He was an Italian hermit who became a trusted adviser to the French court. So from its first stone, this was a French foundation on Roman ground. That link has never fully broken. The church is still cared for by a French institution today.

Building took a long time, as it often did in Rome. Work continued through much of the sixteenth century. In 1585, Pope Sixtus the Fifth consecrated the church. Sixtus was a builder pope. He reshaped Rome with long, straight streets that connected its great churches. One of those streets, running south from here, still leads toward Santa Maria Maggiore. Stand at the top of the steps and look down the city. You are looking along a plan drawn more than four centuries ago.

Now look at the facade itself. The twin bell towers are the detail people remember. In Rome, this pairing was unusual for its time, and it gives the church a slightly northern, almost French silhouette. A double staircase leads up to the main door. It curves outward like two arms. Notice how the whole composition is wide and calm. It does not shout. It sits above the piazza and waits for you to climb.

In front of the church stands an obelisk. Here is a surprise. It looks Egyptian, and it is covered in hieroglyphs. But it was carved in Roman times, as an imitation. The Romans loved Egyptian style, and wealthy owners copied it for their gardens. This obelisk once stood in the Gardens of Sallust, a famous estate not far from here. The hieroglyphs were copied from a genuine Egyptian obelisk, so they do not read as true Egyptian text. Pope Pius the Sixth raised it on this spot in 1789.

Turn around and face the steps. For two centuries after the church was built, this slope was muddy, steep and awkward. People climbed it on paths and ramps. In the early eighteenth century, money left by a French diplomat helped pay for a proper staircase. The architect Francesco de Sanctis designed it, and the steps were finished in the 1720s. They take their name from the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, which stands in the piazza below. So the Spanish Steps are a French project with a Spanish name.

The design is clever. The steps do not climb in one straight line. They split, curve, pause on terraces, and join again. This was meant to feel like a slow ascent, almost a ceremony. At the bottom, you can see the Barcaccia, a fountain shaped like a half-sunken boat. It is the work of Pietro Bernini, with help from his son, the great sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. A popular story says it recalls a boat left stranded here after a Tiber flood. That is local legend, but it is a good one.

Now step inside the church, if it is open and a service is not taking place. The light changes at once. After the bright piazza, the nave feels cool and quiet. The church has a single main space with chapels along each side. Many of these chapels were decorated by artists working in Rome during the sixteenth century. Walk slowly. The best paintings are not in the centre. They wait in the side chapels.

The most admired work here is a Deposition by Daniele da Volterra. It shows Christ being lowered from the cross. Daniele was a close follower of Michelangelo, and you can see that influence in the strong, muscular bodies and the tense poses. The fresco was praised in its own time and copied by many later artists. Today it is damaged in places. Even so, the drama of the scene is clear. Look at the figures on the ladders, and the weight of the body they hold.

There is another curious link with Daniele da Volterra. He is also the painter who was asked to cover some of the nude figures in Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. Because of that, Romans gave him a teasing nickname, Il Braghettone, which means roughly the breeches painter. So the artist of this deeply serious fresco is remembered, a little unfairly, for adding cloth to someone else's masterpiece.

Behind the church lies the old convent. In the nineteenth century, it passed to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, a French teaching order, and it became a school. The convent holds one of the strangest secrets of this hill. In one corridor, the Minim friars painted a fresco that looks distorted from most angles. When you stand in the right place, the image suddenly becomes clear. This trick is called anamorphosis, a kind of perspective illusion. The friars here were serious students of mathematics and optics. These rooms are usually seen only on guided visits.

Step back outside and follow the road to the left of the church. It runs along the edge of the hill toward Villa Medici, the home of the French Academy in Rome. Again, you meet France. Down at the foot of the steps, on the right side, is the house where the English poet John Keats died in 1821. Writers, painters and travellers have climbed this slope for centuries. Many of them stopped exactly where you stand.

Before you go, find a place at the balustrade and look out. The domes of Rome sit low across the rooftops. Below you, the steps carry their endless traffic of people, each one climbing toward this pale church with its two towers. Notice the warm colour of the stone in the late light, and the sound of the fountain rising from below. As you walk away, glance back once. The church is still there at the top, quietly finishing the view.