Piazza Navona
Piazza Navona is a jewel of the Roman Baroque. Its name probably derives from "agone" ("nagone", "navone") that is to say "gara, gioco" ("race, game") referring to the naval battles that took place when the square had a concave bottom which was artificially flooded for naval games. The beautifully shaped square was built on the site of the Stadium of Domitian, of which it has kept the form.
The two greatest Baroque geniuses meet in Piazza Navona: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, creator of the Fountain of the Four Rivers (the Ganges, Nile, Danube and Plate), and Francesco Borromini, architect of the Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, unusual because of its splendid concave facade (inside, a 17th century innovation: over the altars, instead of paintings, there are a series of marble bas-reliefs). Besides the other two other fountains, that of Neptune and that of the Moro (Moor), splendid palaces adorn the square: the Palazzo Pamphili, planned by the Roman architect Girolamo Rainaldi for the Pamphili family, patron of the entire square, and in one corner the Palazzo Braschi, built at the end of the 18th century by Cosimo Morelli. The oldest building in the square is the Church of Nostra Signora del Sacro Cuore in front of the Palazzo Pamphili. It Is a work of the 15th century that contains treasures such as: the Choir-Stall and the Chapel of St. James by Antonio da San Gallo the Younger. Nearby, in the Church of Saint Luigi dei Francesi, some of the fundamental masterpieces of Italian art can be admired: the three large canvasses by Caravaggio. highest examples of painting after Michelangelo, dating from the end of the 16th century: the Calling of St. Matthew, the Martyrdom of Matthew and St. Mathew and the Angel.
Caravaggio's paintings stand out for their innovative and disturbing realism, and for the unusual use of light, even in his own day, so much so that the last of these three paintings was deemed unfit for a church because St. Matthew appears as a tired old man with dirty feet.
Piazza Navona Rome
