DK Travel : Rome : The Spanish Steps and Villa Borghese

Here is rome at its most orderly and elegant, carefully laid out under 16th-century papal urban planning schemes. Baroque popes such as Leo X and Sixtus V redeveloped the all but abandoned area around the Corso, the extension of the ancient Via Flaminia from northern Italy, for their rapidly growing city. Romans now call it the Tridente after the trident of streets - Corso, Ripetta and Babuino - diverging from Piazza del Popolo. It’s an area stamped by a love of theatricality: the beautifully symmetrical Piazza del Popolo; long vistas that stretch down arrow-straight roads; the carefully landscaped Pincio gardens and the lush expanse of Villa Borghese; the stage-set backdrop of the Spanish Steps; the oversized and overwrought Trevi Fountain. It’s also Rome’s most stylishly self-conscious district, famous for its boutiques hawking frighteningly expensive high fashion. Artists have long made their home along Via Margutta, as numerous galleries and antiques shops attest, and Rome’s most elegant passeggiata (the traditional early evening see-and-be-seen stroll) unfolds down the length of Via del Corso.

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SS Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso

Roman Baroque church (1669) by Pietro da Cortona, who designed the tribune, cupola and stuccoes.
The Spanish Steps and Piazza di Spagna

This elegant, off-centre sweep of a staircase is Rome’s most beloved Rococo monument. It is at its most memorable in May, when it is covered in azaleas, but all year round it is littered with people drinking in la dolce vita (sweet life) and musicians strumming guitars until late into the night. Francesco De Sanctis designed the steps in 1723–6 for King Louis XV, and their true name in Italian is Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti, after the church at the top. The hourglass-shaped Piazza di Spagna, with its Bernini Barcaccia fountain and milling tourists, was named after the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican located nearby.
The Victoria House Pub

Every British ex-pat seems to have adopted this Victorian-style pub as his or her own, lending it an air of authenticity.
Trevi Fountain

Anita Ekberg bathed in it in La Dolce Vita ; Three Coins in a Fountain taught us to throw coins backwards over our shoulder to ensure a return visit to Rome (healthier than the original tradition of drinking the water for luck) – thanks to the world of cinema this beautiful fountain is one of the most familiar sights of Rome. The right relief shows a virgin discovering the spring from which Augustus (left relief) built the Acqua Vergine aqueduct, which still feeds the fountain. Nicola Salvi paid homage to these ancient origins by grafting his exuberant Baroque confection onto the Classical architectural framework of a triumphal arch.
Trinità dei Monti

This church, crowning the French-commissioned Spanish Steps, was part of a convent founded by Louis XII in 1503. The twin-towered façade (1584) is by Giacomo della Porta; the double staircase (1587) by Domenico Fontana. Unfortunately, the Baroque interior is divided at the third chapel by an iron grille opened only during services. Daniele da Volterra frescoed the third chapel on the right and painted the Assumption altarpiece (which includes a portrait of his teacher Michelangelo as the far right figure), as well as the Deposition in the second chapel on the left. The nearby 16th-century Villa Medici (open for special exhibits) has housed the French Academy since 1803.
Valentino

Boutique for the prêt-à-porter collection of this native Roman designer in the top echelon of fashion since Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn donned his clothes in the 1960s.
Vertecchi

The queen of Rome’s stationery stores, with hundreds of types of pens (the fancier ones are sold next door at No. 72), thousands of notebooks, and the very best in art supplies.
Via Condotti

The “Fifth Avenue” of Rome, lined with some of its chicest shops and fashion boutiques of top-name designers. After flirting with high street retail chains in the 1990s, the street has been re-conquered by the haute couture that made it famous. It’s fun to window-shop if you can’t afford to buy.
Villa Borghese

Rome’s largest green space is made up of 688 ha (1,700 acres) of public park, landscaped gardens, statuary, fountains, groves, pathways, pavilions and a water clock. There are also three world-class museums: the Renaissance and Baroque art at Galleria Borghese, ancient Etruscan artifacts at Villa Giulia, and modern art at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. It’s all thanks to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who in 1608 turned these vast family lands just outside the Aurelian walls into a private pleasure park, opened to the public in 1901. In 1809–14, Giuseppe Valadier had turned the adjacent space within the city walls into the terraced Pincio gardens, a favourite passeggiata destination studded with statues of great Italians. There’s an elaborate tea house and an obelisk commissioned by Hadrian to honour his lover.
Villa Giulia

Contains Italy’s top Etruscan collection, celebrating the peninsula’s first great civilization (8th to 3rd centuries BC).