DK Travel : Rome : Around Piazza Navona

This is Baroque Rome in all its theatrical glory, a collection of curvaceous architecture and elaborate fountains by the era’s two greatest architects, Bernini and Borromini, and churches filled with paintings by the likes of Caravaggio and Rubens. The street plan was largely overhauled by 16th- to 18th-century popes attempting to improve the traffic flow from St Peter’s – in fact, a 19th-century plan to turn Piazza Navona into a boulevard from Prati across Ponte Umberto I was only killed when wiser heads widened Corso del Rinascimento instead. However, ancient Rome does peek through in the shape of Piazza Navona and the curve of Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne. This is also a neighbourhood of craftsmen, shopkeepers and antiques restorers and dealers who line Via dei Coronari (see Antiques Shops). More recently the narrow alleys around Via della Pace have become a centre of Roman nightlife, with tiny pubs, trendy cafés and nightspots where the clientele spills out into the streets in summer (see Chic Cafés and Bars).

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Palazzo Braschi

The last papal family palace built from 1791 to 1811. Cosimo Morelli used a Renaissance design to match the piazza. Inside is a small museum dedicated to Roman history.
Palazzo Madama

Based around the 16th-century Medici Pope Leo X’s Renaissance palace, the Baroque façade of unpointed brick and bold marble window frames was added in the 17th century. Since 1870 it’s been the seat of Italy’s Senate, so public admission is obviously limited.
Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne

This masterpiece of Baldassare Peruzzi marks the transition of Roman architecture from the High Renaissance of Bramante and Sangallo into the theatrical experiments of Mannerism that would lead up to the Baroque. The façade is curved for a reason; Peruzzi honoured Neo-Classical precepts so much he wanted to preserve the arc of the Odeon of Domitian, a small theatre incorporated into the south end of the emperor’s stadium.
Palazzo Pamphilj

This 17th-century palace has a wonderful Pietro da Cortona fresco upstairs.
Pasquino

That this faceless, armless statue was part of “Menelaus with the body of Patroclus” (a Roman copy of a Hellenistic group) is almost irrelevant. Since this worn fragment took up its post here in 1501, it has been Rome’s most vocal “Talking Statue” (see Around Piazza Navona).
Piazza Navona

One of Rome’s loveliest pedestrian squares is studded with fountains and lined with palaces, such as the Pamphilj, the church of Sant’Agnese, and classy cafés such as Tre Scalini.
Pizzeria da Baffetto

By many folks’s reckoning, the best pizzeria in Rome.
Pizzeria La Montecarlo

The offspring of Baffetto’s owners run this joint. Has less ambience than its famous parent, but benefits from shorter queues.
San Luigi dei Francesi

France’s national church in Rome has some damaged Domenichino frescoes (1616–17) in the second chapel on the right, but everyone bee-lines for the last chapel on the left, housing three large Caravaggio works. His plebeian, naturalistic approach often ran foul of Counter-Reformation tastes. In a “first draft” version of the Angel and St Matthew , the angel guided the hand of a rough labourer-type saint; the commissioners made the artist replace it with this more courtly one. Underlying sketches in Martyrdom of St Matthew and Calling of St Matthew (see Caravaggio’s Calling of St Matthew) show how Caravaggio was moving away from symbolic compositions in favour of more realistic scenes.
San Salvatore in Lauro

A chapel in this 1594 church houses da Cortona’s Adoration of the Shepherds (1630).

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