Roma - Fontane

Via Goffredo Mameli
Fontana del Prigione

Villa Montalto, owned by Sisto V Peretti (1585-1590) and found on the Esquilino hill, was the largest private property within the city walls. At the end of the nineteenth century, precisely in 1877, the whole area was divided up to build the Termini railway station, piazza dei Cinquecento and other modern districts. The only fountain left after the destruction of the villa, also a work by Domenico Fontana, was constructed in 1938 on the slopes of the Gianicolo are an apt background for via Manara. Today the fountain has a large niche surrounded by two pilaster strips with an over-hanging, richly decorated frontal-piece at the centre of which water flows from a lion’s head to be collected in a basin protected by six small columns. The statue of a prisoner that gave its name to the fountain has been lost.