A Square in Collective Memory
Piazza Navona is not simply a physical place: it is a mental space. Over the centuries, the square has functioned as a stage for Roman public life — a theatre of festivals, markets, religious celebrations and seasonal rituals that have left indelible marks on European cultural memory.
Its shape — the elongated oval of Domitian's stadium — has no parallel in world urbanism. This uniqueness made the square a privileged subject for painters, writers, poets and travellers who over the centuries sought in it the very essence of Rome.
The Summer Flooding: A Lost Tradition
Among the most distinctive traditions that made Piazza Navona unique in European urban history, the allagamento — also known as the giochi dell'acqua (water games) — holds a special place.
Every August, on Saturdays and Sundays from late morning until sunset, the outlets at the base of the fountains were sealed and water was allowed to flow freely across the paved surface. The square transformed into a shallow mirror of water — between twenty and thirty centimetres deep — and noble families paraded through it in carriages, children played in it, and common people gathered on its edges.
The tradition, documented at least from the seventeenth century, reflected the Baroque taste for spectacle and the mingling of sacred and profane. The Pamphilj family, owners of the palazzo overlooking the square, were among the protagonists of these rituals. The flooding was permanently suspended in 1866–1867, when the municipality of Rome decided to allocate water resources to more rational uses.
Grand Tour Travellers
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no European tour was complete without Rome. And no Roman stay was complete without Piazza Navona.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited Rome between 1786 and 1788. In his Italian Journey (Italienische Reise, 1816–1817) he described city life with the eye of someone seeking the measure of the classical world in modern stones. The square was one of the places where Roman popular life manifested itself in its most authentic form.
Charles Dickens stayed in Rome in 1845 and left a vivid account in Pictures from Italy (1846). His description of the Roman Carnival — the confetti, the masks, the crowd, the moccolo (the candle everyone tried to extinguish their neighbour's) — captures the festive temperament of a city that knew how to celebrate with a collective participation unmatched in Northern Europe.
Other illustrious witnesses: the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot frequented Rome in the 1820s and 1830s; the naturalist Charles de Brosses left epistolary accounts in the eighteenth century; Stendhal (Henri Beyle) returned to it multiple times, finding confirmation of his theory of sentimental crystallisation.
The Pictorial Tradition: The Vedutisti
No Roman square has been depicted more than Piazza Navona. The vedutisti of the eighteenth century — painters specialising in highly precise urban views — found in it an ideal subject for spatial quality, architectural variety and the movement of life.
Gaspare Vanvitelli (Gaspar van Wittel, 1653–1736), Dutch by birth and Roman by adoption, painted Piazza Navona in multiple versions. His canvases document the square before its current appearance was definitively consolidated, showing shops, carriages and the crowds of daily life.
Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691–1765) included it in compositions of Roman views that circulated throughout Europe, helping to build the city's image in Grand Tour salons.
In the nineteenth century, the square entered the Romantic imagination, associated with the landscape of Roman senses: afternoon heat, the sound of water, the voices of the market.
From the Nineteenth Century to Modernity
The nineteenth century brought profound changes. The end of the flooding (1866–1867), the addition of the central sculptural group to the Fountain of Neptune (1873, by Antonio della Bitta), the gradual transformation of the daily market, then its definitive transfer to Campo de' Fiori in 1869: the square lost some of its traditional functions but gained the character of a place of collective memory.
The twentieth century brought first motor traffic — photographs from the 1950s show cars parked along the perimeter — then the gradual pedestrianisation, completed between the 1970s and 1980s, which returned the square to pedestrians.
Enduring Symbol of Rome
Today Piazza Navona has firmly entered the canon of Rome's symbols alongside the Colosseum and the Pantheon. Its profile is reproduced on millions of images, postcards, guides. But unlike many Roman monuments, the square still lives its own life: artists, cafés, passers-by, children running around the fountains at sunset.
This continuity between history and present is perhaps its most precious characteristic.
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Frequently Asked Questions
When was the flooding tradition abolished? In 1866–1867, when the municipality of Rome decided to stop allocating water resources to the summer tradition.
Did Goethe visit Piazza Navona? Yes. Goethe stayed in Rome between 1786 and 1788 and mentions it in his Italian Journey, alongside many other aspects of Roman popular life.
Who painted the square in the eighteenth century? Among the best-known vedutisti, Gaspare Vanvitelli (Gaspar van Wittel) and Giovanni Paolo Panini left fundamental representations of the square in the 1700s.
Article no. 157 — TIER S — MON-08 Piazza Navona Type: HISTORICAL Words: ~900