Palazzo del Quirinale

Palace · Quirinale (Rione Monti / Trevi)Rome,Italy

The palace on Rome's highest hill from which popes, kings and now presidents have governed, its square holding two ancient marble horse-tamers.

The Quirinale stands on the highest of Rome's hills, and whoever has governed the city has governed it from up here. The popes began building in the 1580s and came up for the summer air, then stayed and made it their main house. It has never been retired into a museum: this is the residence of the President of the Republic and a working seat of state, so the long front you walk past is offices. Seeing inside means booking weeks ahead and carrying identification, and a state occasion can cancel your visit at short notice. For most people it stays a front seen from the square. The square in front is open to anyone and is the reason to climb the hill. Two marble men over five metres tall stand there holding rearing horses. They were carved in antiquity for a bath complex on this hill and were never buried or lost: they simply stood here through every century. Medieval Romans called the whole hill the horse mountain because of them. An obelisk was raised between them in 1786, and the pair was pulled apart to make room for it. From the balustrade beside them you look out over the rooftops and domes of the city below.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Line the horses up with the obelisk from the low end — From the balustrade the two statue groups and the obelisk fall into one view, as they were arranged in 1786.
Come at night for the square — The horse tamers and the palace front are lit, the square is almost empty, and it feels like a quiet hilltop rather than a thoroughfare.
Inside means booking weeks ahead and carrying identification — visits are set-day only, closed on Mondays and Thursdays, and can be cancelled at short notice for a state event.
Look at the horses' surfaces up close — these are ancient marbles that have never been underground, so you can see two thousand years of rain and city air worn into the stone.

Things to do

1
Come up from the Trevi Fountain on foot
Leave the fountain by the streets climbing behind it and keep going up. The noise drops away within two minutes, the stairs and lanes are almost empty, and you arrive at a wide open hilltop square with a view. The contrast between the two places, five minutes apart, is the point of the walk.
2
Stand between the two horse tamers
Stand exactly midway between the two statues, facing the obelisk. Each man is over five metres tall and each is holding back a rearing horse with one arm. They were carved for the front of a Roman bath building and have stood outdoors on this spot ever since.
3
Watch the mounted guard change
On Sunday mornings in the warmer months a mounted detachment changes the guard in front of the palace, with a band. It is short and it is genuinely a state ceremony rather than a display for visitors, so the square fills with Roman families as much as anyone else.