Roma - Fontane

Piazza del Campidoglio
Fontana della Dea Roma

In about 1536 Michelangelo created the fountain in Campidoglio known as the “Senate steps” or “Pallas kidnapped”. It was not intended as a fountain (water did not reach the Campidoglio until about fifty years later) but rather as a superb ornament in the square. In the central niche in the steps Michelangelo inserted a colossal statue of Minerva found today in the courtyard of the Capitoline museum. The statue remained there for about ten years and was then replaced by the actual, much smaller one of the goddess Roma triumphans. The statue of the goddess Roma raised on three bases has a marble face and extremities whilst the drapes are in porphyre. On either side of the large niche in the light of the steps Michelangelo inserted two enormous statues representing the rivers Nile and Tigris that originally adorned the thermal baths of Constantine on the Quirinale hills. The Romans wanted to transform the Tigris into the Tiber and therefore changed the tiger into a wolf and placed it beside Romulus and Remus. In order to change the entire complex of the Senate steps into a fountain, something that the architect Giacomo della Porta opposed vigorously, a competition was announced and won in January 1588 by Matteo Bartolani of the Citta di Castello.