Piazza del Popolo

Landmark · Campo MarzioRome,Italy

A great oval square at Rome's northern gate, the city's first sight for travellers from the north, three straight streets fanning from an Egyptian obelisk.

Piazza del Popolo is a large oval square at the northern gate of Rome, with an Egyptian obelisk at its centre and a fountain of stone lions around its base. Stand under it and three straight streets fan out in front of you, the arrangement Romans call the trident. Two domed churches flank the middle street and read as a matching pair from here. Giuseppe Valadier gave the square its present shape in the early 1800s, curving the two long sides into the oval you are standing in. The name most likely comes from the poplar trees that once shaded the spot. For centuries this oval was the first piece of Rome that travellers saw, arriving from the north through the gate in the Aurelian walls. The obelisk was carved for a pharaoh, shipped here by Augustus and raised on this spot in 1589. Santa Maria del Popolo, the church beside the gate, holds two Caravaggios in a side chapel. Traffic once cut through the square; it belongs to people on foot now, and the evening crowd drifts up to the Pincio terrace for the view down over the whole oval.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The Caravaggios hide in a side chapel — the church by the gate holds two of his darkest, most violent canvases; a coin-fed lamp is the only thing that lifts them out of the shadows.
Come early or after dark — at midday the oval bakes with almost no shade; early and late it belongs to locals crossing home.
Frame the obelisk down the Corso — line up under the twin churches and the ancient spire points straight down Rome's dead-straight shopping street.

Things to do

1
Look down on the oval from the Pincio
The ramps on the eastern side of the square climb to the Pincio terrace, and the balustrade directly above the oval is where the whole shape closes into one frame. From up there you can finally see what the square does: three streets pulling away from a single point below you, with St Peter's dome across the river on the same line as the setting sun.
2
Find the exact point where three streets begin
Position yourself between the twin churches, at the very mouth of the trident. Look down each street in turn — Via del Corso running dead straight into the city's heart, Via del Babuino toward the Spanish Steps, Via di Ripetta toward the river. One spot, three different Romes opening in front of you. Behind you the obelisk stands on a base where four stone lions spit arcs of water, and the evening crowd circles it.
3
Step into the church for Raphael's chapel
Go into Santa Maria del Popolo and take the second chapel on the left. Raphael laid the Chigi Chapel out as a burial chapel for a banker, with two stone pyramids for tombs and God dividing the planets in mosaic overhead. Bernini finished the sculpture a century later, which is why the chapel reads as two ages at once.