Save Rome's Piazza Navona, say locals

My heart went out to Flaminia Borghese when I read in The Times of her heartfelt appeal to the Rome tourist authorities and to the restaurant owners in the Piazza Navona to think about the look of this ancient square.

The Piazza Navona is the last stop on our Rome Spanish Steps tour, one of our two audio tours of Rome and it’s one of the most famous squares in city, if not the world. Anyone thinking of taking a Rome city break should be putting it on his or her itinerary.

"We are in the middle of the Centro Storico which is very beautiful but we don’t see beauty anymore," Signora Borghese told The Times. There certainly is beauty in the square, most notably its three fountains.

All of fountains in the Piazza Navona are typically extravagant and decorative and all have water as a theme. At the north end of the square is the Fontana di Nettuno. It's the newest of the three fountains and it shows Neptune fighting with various sea monsters. In the middle is the Fontana dei Quattro Fiume or 'fountain of the four rivers' which was designed by Bernini and built by some of his students. The four seated figures represent what were then regarded as the four great rivers of the world - the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the River Plate, each located on one of the four main continents.

This monument was really built to display the obelisk above it - another bit of Egyptian art looted by the Romans. It was left in pieces for centuries until Innocent X brought it here. But it wasn't so much Egyptian archaeology that he was interested in - right on the top of the obelisk he placed a dove – the emblem of the Pamphilj family.

Incidentally, you'll notice that lower down, one of the river figures - Nile - is covering his eyes. It's said that Bernini included this detail to suggest that the figure was shielding his gaze from the awful mess that his rival Borromini had made of the church of St Agnes opposite. In fact the church was built after this fountain and the real reason for the gesture is probably to indicate that the source of the Nile was still not known in those days. But myth is still a nice story.

The third fountain down at the southern end of the square is the Fontana del Moro, the 'fountain of the moor' and you can see the North African gentleman in question in the middle, surrounded by sea creatures. He was originally sculpted by Bernini but what you can see today is an early twentieth century replica. The original is in the gardens of the Villa Borghese – originally owned by the family of Flaminia Borghese.

The Piazza Navona is one of the most popular stops on our Rome mp3 tour and I wish Signora Borghese well with her campaign.