Roma - Fontane

Piazza del Porto di Ripetta
Fontana dei Navigatori

Pope Clemente XI Albani had this fountain built in 1704 on the banks of the Tiber near the small port of Ripetta so that the porters who unloaded the wood and wine could quench their thirst. The designer Alessando Specchi imagined an oval basin with a rock on which was placed a shell with a dolphin at each end. The water that flows from the top of the rock, with its coat of arms of Albini at the top, and from the dolphin’s mouths is collected into the basin below. Halfway through the eighteenth century a lantern was added at the top to facilitate the nocturnal embarkation of the ships.