Piazza Navona is a public open space in Rome, Italy. It is built on the site of the Stadium of Domitian, built in the 1st century AD, and follows the form of the open space of the stadium. Piazza Navona has several beautiful fountains, one of them is Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi.
Defined as a public space in the last years of the 15th century, when the city market was transferred there from the Campidoglio, Piazza Navona was transformed into a highly significant example of Baroque Roman architecture and art.
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, literally meaning Fountain of the Four Rivers, was designed in 1651 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Pope Innocent X.
The base of the fountain is a basin from the centre of which travertine rocks rise to support four river gods and above them, a copy of an Egyptian obelisk surmounted with the Pamphili family emblem of a dove with an olive twig.
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi represents four major rivers of the four continents through which papal authority had spread: the Nile representing Africa, the Danube representing Europe, the Ganges representing Asia, and the Río de la Plata representing the Americas.
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi is an important scene in Dan Brown's novel "Angels and Demons", so it attracts many book fans to drop a visit here.
