Spanish Steps

Landmark · Piazza di Spagna (Campo Marzio)Rome,Italy

A Baroque staircase of some 135 steps climbing from a Roman square to a hilltop church, widening and merging so no two flights look alike.

The Spanish Steps are a wide Baroque staircase of about a hundred and thirty-five steps, climbing from Piazza di Spagna to the twin-towered church of Trinità dei Monti on the hill above. The flights widen, narrow and merge again, so no two of them meet the eye the same way. Francesco de Sanctis designed the whole thing in the 1720s to be walked through rather than looked at from one spot. At the foot sits the Barcaccia, a fountain carved as a half-sunken boat. Climb and the rooftops of Rome open behind you. In spring the terraces fill with pots of azaleas, a brief blaze of pink against pale travertine. The house where John Keats died in 1821 stands at one side of the foot, now a small museum. The steps are as much a meeting place as a route, and people gather on them from morning until late; sitting on them has been fined since 2019, so the crowd stands and drifts instead. The name comes from the Spanish embassy that once faced the square, though French money paid for the stone.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Don't trust the downward photo — from below the staircase flattens into a single face and loses its shifting rhythm; the play of the flights only appears while you climb.
Stay for the lamplight — after dark the daytime river of people thins and warm lamps pick out the travertine, letting the steps read as pure architecture rather than a crowd.
Look, don't lounge — Rome now treats its monument stairs as a monument rather than a bench, so sitting to eat and linger is discouraged; save the picnic for a nearby square.
Find Keats's window — the shuttered house at the base's right corner is where the poet spent his last months; look up to the second-floor windows facing the steps.
The azaleas are staged, not planted — for a few spring weeks the city banks the flights with hundreds of potted azaleas brought in and arranged, then carries them away again.

Things to do

1
Climb before the crowd wakes
Arrive not long after sunrise, when the terraces are nearly empty. Start down at the Barcaccia, then take the steps slowly, stopping at each landing to watch the view widen behind you. From the first wide terrace, turn and look straight down. The fountain sits at the base where the arrow-straight run of Via dei Condotti threads off into the city, the whole thing stacking into one long receding view. At the top, cross to the church terrace and look back down the entire cascade toward the waking rooftops.
2
Read the Barcaccia as a sinking boat
The fountain at the foot is carved as a boat going under. Its deck already sits below the rim of the pool, and water comes in over the sides as much as it runs out of them. The suns and bees on the hull are the badge of the pope who paid for it. Walk round it once and the whole conceit is legible from every side.