The reason Piazza Navona is that peculiar shape — long, narrow, straight down both sides and curved at one end — is that it is not a square. It is the infield of a Roman athletics stadium, and the buildings around it stand on the seating. The stadium is still down there, about 4.5 to 5 metres below the modern paving, and you can go into part of it.
Built for running, not for blood
Domitian commissioned the stadium in 80 AD. His architect was Rabirius, the same man who built the imperial palace on the Palatine.
What it was built for matters, because almost everyone assumes wrongly. This was not an arena for gladiators. Domitian was promoting Greek athletics — footraces, wrestling, boxing, pankration, the pentathlon — as a deliberate cultural policy. Non-lethal contests, in a Greek stadium plan: a long rectangle with a semicircular turn (the hemicycle) at the north end and an angled starting line at the south.
It measured roughly 275 by 106 metres, with a track of about 200 to 240 metres, built in Roman concrete faced with brick, on radial barrel vaults carrying two tiers of seating.
Gladiators did fight here, but only briefly, after the fire of 217 AD put the Colosseum out of action.
The name has nothing to do with ships
Navona looks like it should come from nave, a ship, and the square's famous floodings look like they should be connected to naval battles. Neither is true.
The name is a worn-down version of the Latin in agone — "in the contest arena". In agone became n'agone, then navone, then navona. The church on the west side still carries the older form in its name: Sant'Agnese in Agone.
Where the shape came from, and where it went
Julius Caesar put a temporary wooden stadium on this spot around 46 BC for Greek games after his triumphs. Augustus and Agrippa reused the location the same way. Domitian made it permanent.
Then the empire ended and the building was mined. Builders took the marble seating, the facing and the travertine, either for new construction or to burn into quicklime.
What they could not take away was the footprint. Medieval Rome built houses on top of the standing vaults, following the curve, and the open middle stayed open. In 1477 Sixtus IV moved Rome's central market here, and the infield of a Roman stadium became a market square.
The lake
From 1652 to 1866, on August weekends, the outlets of the three fountains were plugged.
The centre of the piazza is slightly concave, so the water spread and stood, turning the square into a shallow ornamental lake. The aristocracy drove decorated carriages through it while everyone else celebrated around the edges. It ran for over two centuries, and it is the origin of the mistaken idea that the Romans flooded the place for mock sea battles.
The Pamphilj square
The piazza you actually see is the work of one pope and one family. Innocent X — Giambattista Pamphilj — turned it into a monumental forum for his own dynasty, commissioning the Palazzo Pamphilj, Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, and Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the Four Rivers Fountain, finished in 1651.
His sister-in-law Olimpia Maidalchini was his closest adviser and is inseparable from the project, to the considerable irritation of contemporary Rome.
The Nile is not snubbing Borromini
This is the single most repeated story in the square, and the dates kill it.
The tale goes that Bernini's personification of the Nile has its head veiled because it cannot bear to look at Borromini's church facade opposite, the two men being rivals.
The fountain was finished in 1651. Borromini did not start on the church facade until 1653. The statue was veiled before there was anything to avoid looking at. The veil means what it plainly means: at the time, nobody knew where the Nile's source was.
The obelisk is Roman, and second-hand
The obelisk on top of the fountain was carved in Egypt, but on Domitian's orders, not a pharaoh's — the quarry marks and inscriptions show it.
It was shipped to Rome and set up in the Circus of Maxentius out on the Via Appia. Bernini salvaged it from there in 1648 and brought it here. Its hieroglyphs name Roman emperors.
Pasquino, round the corner
Just off the south-west corner stands Pasquino, a battered third-century BC Hellenistic marble torso.
Since the sixteenth century, Romans have stuck anonymous satirical verses and political attacks to its base — safer than saying them out loud. The statue gave the language the word pasquinade. It is still used.
Four things almost everyone believes that aren't true
| Claim | Verdict | What is actually the case |
|---|---|---|
| The Nile veils its head to avoid Borromini's church | False | Fountain finished 1651; the facade was begun in 1653. The veil is about the unknown source of the Nile |
| It was built for mock naval battles | False | Built for Greek athletics, with no watertight masonry or flooding system. The deliberate flooding starts in the 1650s |
| Innocent X brought the obelisk from Egypt | False | Carved in Egypt under Domitian, erected in the Circus of Maxentius, moved here by Bernini in 1648 |
| Domitian's stadium was for gladiators | False | Footraces, wrestling, boxing, pankration. Gladiators only after the Colosseum burned in 217 AD |
Saint Agnes and the vaults. Christian tradition holds that Agnes was stripped and killed inside the stadium's vaults during Diocletian's persecutions around 304 AD, and the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone is built on the spot the tradition identifies. That is the reason the church is where it is. It is tradition rather than documented event, and the guide treats it that way.
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Written from Wanderlight's research dossier for Piazza Navona — the same one the narration is written from. Where the evidence is thin, this page says so rather than rounding the uncertainty up.