Back on Piazza della Rotonda you need to take Via Giustiniani which brings you to the 16th century Palazzo Madama, now the seat of the Italian Senate, and to the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi which houses Caravaggio's three magnificent paintings depicting the life of St Matthew. Continuing straight between the church and the palace and crossing Corso del Rinascimento, you come to Piazza Navona, one of the most beautiful squares in the world.
The piazza gets its shape from Domitian's 1st century stadium (there are remains of one of the entrances on Piazza di Tor Sanguigna to the north) and is now usually full of strolling Romans and visitors. Facing you as you enter from Palazzo Madama is Bernini's fountain of the four rivers (the Nile, the Danube, the Plate and the Ganges). The figures are symbolic, one of which is said to be recoiling in horror from Borromini's façade for the Church of Saint Agnese in Agone. Bernini also had a hand in designing the tritone in the centre of the so-called fountain of the More, to the south of the piazza. Take the narrow road that leads out of the south and skirt round Palazzo Braschi, the last palace to be built for Rome's great papal families in the 18th century. It houses the Museum of Rome currently closed for restoration. Behind the palace is Piazza Pasquino, where an ancient fragment of a sculpture (called Pasquino) is one of Rome's Œtalking statues¹, to which anonymous complaints about the establishment were attached in the days of papal rule.
