🏛️LandmarkOpen now · Closes 12:00 AMFree

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

Name: Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi
Rating: 4.8

4.8 ·

Step into Piazza Navona and stand before Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. Circle the rock base to spot the four muscular river gods, the towering obelisk, and the Nile figure famously shielding its face from Borromini's church across the square.

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Reasons to go

Completed in 1651 for Pope Innocent X, topped by a genuine Egyptian obelisk set atop a hollowed rocky base.
Each of the four figures—Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Río de la Plata—personifies a continent then known to Europeans.
Legend claims the Nile figure shields its eyes to avoid facing Borromini's Sant'Agnese in Agone, Bernini's rival work across the piazza.

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Full description

Completed in 1651 for Pope Innocent X, the fountain centers on an Egyptian obelisk rising from a rocky base, around which Bernini arranged muscular figures representing the Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Río de la Plata, a symbolic claim to the Church's reach across the known world. A long-running, though likely apocryphal, legend holds that the Nile figure covers its face to avoid looking at the rival façade of Sant'Agnese in Agone, designed by Bernini's professional rival Borromini.

As the centerpiece of Piazza Navona, it's rarely seen without a crowd around it, especially in the evening. It remains one of the clearest examples of Bernini's dramatic, theatrical style.

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Address

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Piazza Navona, 90, 00186 Roma RM, Italy · Parione

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Hours

🎫

Booking

Walk-in

Duration

20 min

Intensity

Easy pace

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Good to know

Visit early morning for a clearer view and better photos before the piazza fills up
look for the symbolism in each river figure, representing a different known continent
it's free and always accessible, part of the open Piazza Navona.

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Reviews

This Majestic fountain by Bernini is one of the most iconic places in Rome.... this magnificent fountain and its four statues was designed by Bernini and the amazing story is that he added his statues keeping in place and supporting a 10 ton Egyptian granite obelisk that seems to be suspended in the air. Try to…

Gonzalo Gonzalez

4/5

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