Spanish Steps (Piazza di Spagna - Piazza di Francia in the seventeenth century), with the Spanish Steps, is one of the most famous squares in Rome.
It owes its name to the palace of Spain, seat of the Iberian state embassy to the Holy See.
In the center of the square is the famous Barcaccia fountain, which dates back to the early Baroque period, sculpted by Pietro Bernini and his son, the most famous Gian Lorenzo Bernini. At the right corner of the staircase is the house of the English poet John Keats, who lived and died there in 1821, today transformed into a museum dedicated to his memory and that of his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley, full of books and memorabilia of English Romanticism.
On the left corner there is the Babington's tea room founded in 1893. On the side of via Frattina stands the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide, owned by the Holy See. In front of its facade, designed by Bernini (while the side facade is instead by Borromini), stands the column of the Immaculate Conception, which was raised after the proclamation of the dogma by the will of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies in thanks for a survivor attack, and inaugurated on December 8, 1857.
Since 1923 the firefighters have offered an acrobatic floral tribute to the statue, using their stairs; in 1953 the same pontiff Pius XII wanted to attend the ceremony, but it was with John XXIII (1958) that the papal presence at this ceremony became a real tradition, faithfully maintained by all the popes.
Currently, the floral tribute in Piazza di Spagna - always accompanied by a Marian prayer from the Pope - is one of the most loved and popular religious ceremonies in Rome.
The square is mentioned in a famous poem by Cesare Pavese, called "I will pass from piazza da Spagna", the text of which has been reproduced in its entirety on a plaque near Babington's tea room.
Spanish Steps
Address: Piazza di Spagna, 00187
Phone: 06 0608
Site:
http://www.turismoroma.it/cosa-fare/piazza-di-spagnaLocation inserted by
Pierpaolo Dori