Pantheon and Campo de' Fiori Walk

The Pantheon is defined by a massive concrete dome that has remained the world’s largest unsupported dome for nearly two thousand years. Its most striking feature is the central opening, or oculus, which serves as the only source of light…

In the center of the Piazza della Minerva stands a marble elephant carrying an ancient Egyptian obelisk on its back. This monument, unveiled in sixteen sixty-seven, was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and executed by his pupil Ercole…

The Church of Saint Louis of the French is recognizable by its travertine façade, which features statues of French figures including Charlemagne and King Louis the Ninth. As the national church for the French community in Rome, it was…

Piazza Navona is defined by its unusual, elongated oval shape, which traces the exact footprint of the ancient Stadium of Domitian. Built in eighty-six AD, this arena once held thirty thousand spectators for Greek-style athletic…

The statue of Pasquino is a battered, armless marble torso that rests on a stone pedestal at the corner of the Palazzo Braschi. It is a fragment of a Hellenistic sculpture, likely representing Menelaus carrying the body of Patroclus, which…

A bronze statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno looms over the center of this square, his robed figure captured in a permanent, defiant stance. Bruno was a former Dominican friar who championed the idea of an infinite universe with…

The Palazzo Farnese is a massive, rectangular block of brick and travertine that dominates its namesake piazza with a heavy, projecting cornice. Commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese—who later became Pope Paul III—the building…

The Galleria Spada is housed within the sixteenth-century Palazzo Spada, a building easily identified by the elaborate Mannerist stucco decorations covering its facade and the statues of Roman figures set into niches along its front.…