Via del Babuino

Via del Babuino is the street that connects Piazza del Popolo to Piazza di Spagna and forms the eastern arm of the Tridente, the fan of three streets that has organized the northern entrance to Rome since the sixteenth century. It lies in the Campo Marzio rione, measures just under 600 meters, and can be walked in a good 10 minutes, or 15 if you really stop to look at something. There is no charge to walk it, it has no opening hours, and it has no gates: it's a public street, open 24 hours a day, and this is the first thing to say to anyone who arrives in Rome with a list of tickets to book. The two Metro A stations that serve it are Flaminio, which comes out at Porta del Popolo, and Spagna, which comes out at the other end: this means you can enter at one end and leave at the other without ever retracing your steps. The name comes from an ancient statue of Silenus, placed on a public fountain in 1571, which the locals of the rione judged so ugly that they nicknamed it babbuino, meaning baboon. The nickname outlasted the official names of the street and replaced all of them. Before it was called this, the street was Via dell'Orto di Napoli, Via del Cavalletto, Via Clementina and Via Paolina, and each of these names corresponds to a piece of urban history that is worth telling in full. Anyone walking here also passes one of Rome's six talking statues, a 16th-century Greek church, an English neo-Gothic Anglican church, and a network of alleys that leads straight to Piazza del Popolo on one side and to Piazza di Spagna on the other, with Via del Corso running parallel just a few dozen meters away.

Where Via del Babuino is and how you actually get there

Via del Babuino runs diagonally through the Campo Marzio rione, the fourth rione of Rome, and joins two of the city's most visited squares. From Piazza del Popolo it heads southeast until it comes out in Piazza di Spagna, almost at the foot of the staircase of Trinità dei Monti. Anyone who looks at a map immediately sees the logic of the Tridente: three streets that start from the same point, under the Flaminio obelisk, and fan out. The one on the left is Via del Babuino and leads toward the Pincio and the staircase, the central one is Via del Corso and runs straight to Piazza Venezia, the one on the right is Via di Ripetta and goes down toward the Tiber, the Mausoleum of Augustus and the Ara Pacis.

Walking is the only way that makes sense: about 600 meters on a very gentle uphill slope from Piazza del Popolo toward Piazza di Spagna, a gradient nobody notices while walking. The surface is sanpietrini cobblestones in the roadway and travertine slabs on the sidewalks, in some stretches so narrow that you have to walk single file when the street is crowded.

By metro: the Flaminio and Spagna stations on Line A

The Metro Line A, the orange one, serves Via del Babuino at both ends, and this is why the street is one of the most convenient in the Historic Center. Flaminio station is just outside Porta del Popolo, on the north side of the square: you exit, cross the gate, and you're already at the start of the street. Spagna station is at the opposite end, with exits onto Piazza di Spagna and a long moving walkway that climbs toward Villa Borghese. Getting off at one and coming back up from the other is the simplest way to see the street without retracing your steps.

Line A runs from Battistini to Anagnina and stops at almost every point a visitor looks for: Ottaviano for St. Peter's and the Vatican Museums, Flaminio, Spagna, Barberini for the Trevi Fountain, Repubblica, Termini, San Giovanni. Trains during rush hour run every few minutes. Opening and closing times differ between weekdays and weekends, so check the transport company's website before planning a trip back up in the evening.

By bus and tram

The central part of the street is not served by surface lines, because private traffic is heavily restricted there. The useful lines stop at the two ends: Piazzale Flaminio is an important hub, with the terminus of tram 2 and several bus lines along the Lungotevere and Viale del Muro Torto. At the other end, the area of Piazza di Spagna and Via del Tritone is served by many lines that converge on Largo Chigi. If you're coming from Termini, though, the Metro is still the fastest option.

By car: why it's the worst choice

Via del Babuino is inside the Zona a Traffico Limitato of the Historic Center, with electronic gates active during the hours set by the city. Entering without a permit means a fine for each gate you pass through, and there are many gates. Even if you do get in, street parking in the Tridente is practically nonexistent, and parking garages are expensive. The underground parking at Villa Borghese, below the Pincio, is the classic solution for those arriving by car from Muro Torto: you leave the car there, walk down through the gardens, and reach Piazza del Popolo in 10 minutes of scenic downhill walking. It also works for families with small children, because the descent from the Pincio is entirely pedestrian.

Access, hours and costs

It's worth being clear here, because this is the question I get asked most often: Via del Babuino has no ticket, no opening hours, and no reservations. It's a public city street, and you can walk it freely at any time of day or night. The Fontana del Babuino is visible from the street with no barrier other than the protective railing installed in 2007. The churches that face the street have their own hours, which must be respected: they are active places of worship, not monuments you can visit at will. The street is also accessible to people with mobility difficulties, with the only caveats being the narrow sidewalks and the sanpietrini paving in the roadway, which is uncomfortable for a wheelchair. It's best to stay on the paved sidewalks and use the marked crossings.

What Via del Babuino really is: an axis of the Tridente, not just a street

To understand Via del Babuino you have to understand the Tridente, because the street did not arise on its own and makes no sense alone. In the sixteenth century, anyone arriving in Rome from the north, which meant almost all the pilgrims coming down from continental Europe along Via Flaminia, entered the city through Porta del Popolo. They found an shapeless space and, beyond it, a medieval urban fabric made of alleys. The project the Renaissance popes pursued for more than a century consisted of turning that entrance into a theatrical machine: a regular square, an obelisk at the center as a vanishing point, and three straight streets opening from the square like a fan toward three different directions of the city.

Via del Babuino is the eastern arm of that fan. The western arm is Via di Ripetta, which runs down toward the river port of the same name, toward the Mausoleum of Augustus and toward the Ara Pacis. The central arm is Via del Corso, the ancient Via Lata, which crosses the entire Campo Marzio as far as Piazza Venezia. The three streets have different functions and different characters, and this difference can still be felt today if you walk them one after another in the same morning: the Corso is commercial and noisy, Ripetta is quieter and more residential, and the Babuino is the most elegant and the least crowded of the three.

The names the street had before

The street already existed in the 14th century, before the Tridente was conceived, and it had two names: Via dell'Orto di Napoli and Via del Cavalletto. These were names from a minor urban fabric, tied to properties and local places, the kind Rome produced by the dozens in every district. In 1525, Pope Clement VII had work carried out that straightened and upgraded the route, and the street took the name Via Clementina, in honor of the pope who had wanted it. It was the first leap in scale: from a service alley to a planned street.

The second leap came in 1540, when Pope Paul III also got involved, and the street became via Paolina. At this stage the street is also documented as Trifaria, a name that alludes precisely to its belonging to the system of the three streets of the Tridente. The fact that two popes in 15 years wanted to leave their own name on this street shows how much it mattered in the urban design of Renaissance Rome: it was not just any street, it was one of the ceremonial access gates to the city.

How the nickname won out over the official names

Then came 1571, and with it the fountain, the statue of Silenus and the popular nickname. The mechanism is typically Roman: the name decided by the authorities is replaced by the one people actually use, and after a few decades it ends up on the maps. The case of the Babuino is particularly clear-cut because the nickname is openly irreverent and wiped out two papal names: anyone who looks for via Paolina on a map of Rome today won't find it.

The character of the street today

The street's current character stems from this history. It is a street of stately eighteenth- and nineteenth-century palazzi, with deep entrance halls, inner courtyards and tall piano nobile floors, and a sequence of facades more regular and severe than that of the Corso. The ground floor has housed businesses tied to the art and antiques market for two centuries, with deep shop windows, discreet signs and many private galleries. Noise levels are lower than on the Corso, and people stop less: it is a street to walk while looking up, not down.

Something that often gets overlooked: Via del Babuino is not pedestrian in the strict sense. The roadway exists, authorized vehicles and taxis pass through, and the sidewalks are narrow. Anyone who arrives expecting a pedestrian island is caught off guard: it's best to look before you cross, especially for scooters.

The Babuino Fountain: what you see and where it stands today

The fountain gives the street its name and has a far more eventful history than its modest appearance suggests. In 1571 Pope Pius V granted Alessandro Grandi, a Roman nobleman, a few once of water from the new Vergine aqueduct, on condition that it result in a public fountain in honor of the pontiff. Grandi had it built, and the complex is recorded as completed by 1576: private munificence with a public purpose, the model that produced dozens of rione fountains in Rome.

An ancient sculpture showing a reclining silenus on a rocky base was placed as the decorative element of the fountain. In Greek mythology, sileni are deities linked to woods, springs and the retinue of Dionysus. Showing them reclining beside a jet of water was a consistent, learned and entirely ordinary iconographic choice for late sixteenth-century Roman taste. The author of the sculpture remains unknown. The neighborhood's public, however, did not read the sculpture the way those who placed it had intended.

Why Silenus became a baboon

The statue was and still is worn, corroded, with irregular features. The bearded, squashed face, the stocky body leaning against the rock, the twisted pose: to the Romans of the rione, the figure did not evoke a woodland deity but a monkey. The verdict was merciless and immediate. The statue came to be called er babbuino, and from there the name passed to the fountain, and from the fountain to the whole street, wiping out via Paolina. It is one of the clearest cases in which popular aesthetic judgment rewrote the street names of a capital.

Anyone who arrives expecting a masterpiece will be disappointed, and the disappointment is part of the experience. The fountain does not compete with the Barcaccia Fountain, a few hundred meters away in piazza di Spagna, nor with anything Roman Baroque will produce in the following century. It should be looked at for what it is: a reused ancient fragment, a sixteenth-century water concession, and a witness to a way of mocking power.

Moves: a statue that changed place several times

The current location is not the original one, and this is the part of the story that almost no one tells in front of the fountain. In 1738 the complex was reorganized: the statue was placed in an architectural niche, fitted with pilasters and decorative dolphins, following eighteenth-century taste that tended to frame ancient elements within new structures. That niche still exists and is at civic number 49a on Via del Babuino: it is something you can look for while walking, and finding it gives a disproportionate satisfaction compared to the effort.

In 1877 came the worst moment. The works for Rome's sewer network as the capital, worksites that gutted and reorganized half of the Historic Center in those years, led to the dismantling of the entire complex. The statue ended up in the courtyard of palazzo Boncompagni Cerasi, where it remained for 80 years, out of public view and effectively forgotten by those who walked the street that took its name from it. An entire generation of Romans has grown up on a street called Via del Babuino without ever having seen the babuino.

The recovery took place in 1957: the statue was returned to Via del Babuino and reinstalled at the church of Sant’Atanasio dei Greci, surrounded by the recovered basin. This is the arrangement you see today. In 2007 a further restoration added a protective iron railing, made necessary by the vandalism and the graffiti that had repeatedly covered the wall and the basin in the previous decades. The railing changes the way you photograph the fountain, and you should factor it in: you can't get as close as you'd like.

How to Find It Without Wandering Around Aimlessly

Anyone walking down Via del Babuino from Piazza del Popolo toward Piazza di Spagna will find the fountain on the left side, next to the two-bell-tower façade of the Sant’Atanasio church, a little more than halfway along. The spot is easy to recognize because the Greek church breaks up the line of civic façades with two small bell towers topped by little domes that look like nothing else on the street. Those coming from Piazza di Spagna, on the other hand, find it on the right, just after passing the neo-Gothic mass of the Anglican church. In both cases the advice is to look up at the bell towers: the fountain is down there, low, set against the wall, and from a distance it isn't visible at all.

A Curiosity About Via del Babuino

The curiosity is that the Babuino is not just a statue: it is one of the six talking statues of Rome. Talking statues are ancient or ancient-style sculptures on which, starting in the 16th century, Romans took the habit of posting anonymous messages at night containing criticism, epigrams and satirical verses against rulers, cardinals, popes and public figures in general. It was the only safe way to say publicly what one thought in a city where temporal and spiritual power coincided and where censorship was an everyday fact.

The six talking statues are Pasquino, which stands in the square of the same name near Piazza Navona and is the most famous, Madama Lucrezia, a colossal bust in Piazza San Marco and the only female figure in the group, Marforio, now kept at the Capitoline Museums, the Fontana del Facchino in Via Lata, the Abate Luigi in Piazza Vidoni, and, of course, the Fontana del Babuino. The word pasquinata, which comes from the name Pasquino, has entered the Italian language and still today indicates an anonymous satirical writing.

The Babuinate

The texts posted on the Babuino took the name babuinate, by analogy with pasquinate. The difference between the two statues lay in tone and audience: Pasquino, which stands at a point of commercial traffic and near the palaces of power, drew the most political and sharpest satire, while the Babuino, on a street of stately homes and shops, drew a more neighborhood-level satire, more tied to local events and to the characters of the neighborhood. The two statues often answered each other: a text posted on Pasquino received a reply posted on the Babuino, and the city read the dialogue passing from one to the other.

Here I need to be precise about one thing, because it's the point where guides and tourist sites tend to make things up. A great many pasquinate and babuinate are circulating online, attributed with dates and authors, and most of these attributions don't hold up to serious verification. They were anonymous texts, written so they couldn't be traced back to anyone, posted at night and removed in the morning. Tradition has handed down some of them, often in versions that differ from one another, and the philology of this material is complicated. I'd rather describe the mechanism, which is documented, than quote verses with a precision they don't have.

The Wall That Keeps Talking

The remarkable thing is that the function never really stopped. For much of the 20th century and up to the early 2000s, the wall next to the Babuino fountain remained a surface where Romans wrote, with paint instead of paper: political slogans, statements, insults, signatures. The phenomenon was so ingrained that the wall was known as one of the densest points of wall writing in the Historic Center. The 2007 restoration and the iron railing ended that era, and today the wall appears clean. But the statue keeps its symbolic role, and on particular occasions someone comes back to post texts there.

The complete route of the six talking statues takes half a day on foot. From the Babuino you head down to the Facchino on via Lata, continue to piazza Vidoni for the Abate Luigi, reach Pasquino behind piazza Navona, go back to piazza San Marco for Madama Lucrezia, and finish at the Campidoglio with Marforio. It's a route that gives a common thread to a walk that would otherwise be a list of unconnected stops.

The Palaces and Churches of Via del Babuino

The street reads well in sequence, going down from piazza del Popolo toward piazza di Spagna. The building front is made up mainly of palaces from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, some of which were built or remodeled in the 1800s, when the area became the favorite neighborhood of the foreign community living in Rome. Not all of them have monumental interest, but the sequence as a whole gives a clear idea of how a prestige street in Rome was built between the 1600s and the 1800s.

The Sequence of Buildings

Walking the street from north to south, you come across Palazzo Nainer, 19th century, the palace that houses a historic luxury hotel at the entrance to the street, also 19th century, Palazzo Emiliani, from 1879, Palazzo Boncompagni Sterbini, 18th century, the Anglican church of All Saints, Palazzo Boncompagni Cerasi, 17th century, the one in whose courtyard the Babuino statue was exiled from 1877 to 1957, the church of Sant'Atanasio with the Babuino fountain beside it, the Pontificio Collegio Greco, 18th century, Palazzo Valadier, 18th century, the Palazzetto Raffaelli, 18th century, Palazzo Saulini, 18th century, and Palazzo Righetti, 19th century.

This list should be taken as a reading guide, not as a cadastral record. The traditional dates of some of these palaces are approximate, and in more than one case they indicate the phase when the facades were redone rather than the original construction. What's useful for someone on foot is something else: look at the doorways. The doorways on Via del Babuino are often open during the day and let you glimpse inner courtyards, staircases and, sometimes, hanging gardens. It's the best way to understand the depth of these blocks, which seem narrow from the street but actually reach all the way to via Margutta.

The Church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci

The church beside the fountain is the most important monument on the street, and almost nobody looks at it. Its history begins in 1573, when Pope Gregory XIII established the Congregation of the Greeks. The college meant to train clergy of the Greek rite was approved in 1577. The first stone of the church was laid in 1580 by Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santoro, and the building was already finished by 1583, when the pope himself celebrated the first Mass of the Greek rite there. The works were directed by Giacomo Della Porta, while the facade was completed by Martino Longhi the Elder.

The facade is divided into two orders by a marble cornice. The portal and niches are in the lower part, the work of Della Porta, and a large window and inscriptions in Greek and Latin are in the upper part, by Longhi. The two bell towers capped with small domes are what make the church instantly recognizable on a street otherwise made of flat civic facades. There's also one detail worth looking for: the clock donated by Pope Clement XIV in 1771, placed above the left bell tower and oriented unusually toward the College building rather than toward the street. It was meant for the students, not passersby, and that choice says everything about the relationship between the institution and the street.

The church still serves a Catholic community of the Byzantine rite. Anyone who enters should keep in mind that the liturgy celebrated is Greek Catholic, with an iconostasis and its own chant, and that opening hours are limited and tied to services. It is not a museum and has no staff for tourist reception. Anyone who happens upon the open door during a service can enter quietly and stay at the back, which is what is done in any active place of worship.

All Saints Anglican Church

A little further on, at the intersection with via Gesù e Maria, rises something that doesn't look like anything else in Rome: an English Neo-Gothic church, with a spire-topped bell tower that exceeds 40 meters in height. It is the Anglican church of All Saints, meaning Ognissanti, built for the large British community that had lived permanently in the neighborhood between Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo since the 19th century. The design is by George Edmund Street, one of the leading architects of the English Gothic Revival, assisted by his son Arthur Edmund Street and with the collaboration of the Italian Pio Barucci.

Construction took place between 1880 and 1887: the first stone was laid on April 9, 1882, and the church opened for worship on April 10, 1887. The bell tower, octagonal on the outside and circular on the inside, was completed much later, in 1937, and reaches a height of 42.7 meters with a travertine spire on an octagonal base. The style is a severe Neo-Gothic, strongly inspired by England, in open contrast with the surrounding Roman architecture. This contrast is exactly the point, because the community that wanted it intended to assert its identity in a Catholic city.

It is worth viewing the church from a certain distance, because the street is too narrow to take it in at a glance. The best spot is a few dozen meters further up, on the opposite side, where the perspective lets you see the spire and the façade together. The church still holds services and also hosts concerts. Times are posted on the front door and should be checked on site.

One thing nobody tells you about Via del Babuino

The thing that is almost never said is that Via del Babuino has a double bottom, and this double bottom is called via Margutta. Via Margutta runs parallel to Via del Babuino, on the side toward the Pincio, and it was not born as an independent street: it arose as a service street, that is, as the back of the buildings on Via del Babuino. The stables, warehouses, servants' quarters, storerooms, and supporting craft workshops all opened onto Margutta, while the formal façades looked onto the Babuino.

This service origin produced a paradoxical effect over the centuries. The spaces on Margutta were low, wide, inexpensive, and often had large openings facing north, that is, with the kind of light painters seek because it doesn't change during the day. From the late 18th century onward, these spaces began to be rented as artists' studios, first to foreigners coming to Rome on the Grand Tour and later to Italian artists. Within a couple of centuries, via Margutta became one of the most famous artists' streets in Europe, and in the 20th century it housed studios, galleries, and homes of painters, sculptors, directors, and set designers.

Why this changes how you visit

The practical consequence is that anyone who walks only Via del Babuino sees half the system. The two streets are linked by a series of passageways, alleys, and archways: via Alibert, vicolo dell'Orto di Napoli, which keeps in its name one of the two 14th-century place names of the main street, and several others connectors. The correct way to walk this area is in a zigzag: go down a stretch on the Babuino, cut over to Margutta, go back up a bit, then backtrack. The time doubles and your understanding of the neighborhood multiplies.

There is also a difference in atmosphere that no description conveys. Via del Babuino is a through street, with constant traffic and steady noise. Via Margutta, though only 50 meters away, is quiet, with ivy on the façades, courtyards visible from the street, and small fountains. The jump in acoustic temperature between the two is immediate and surprises anyone who experiences it for the first time. If you have little time and must choose one of the two for a slow walk, pick Margutta. If you want to understand the Tridente, walk the Babuino.

The courtyards and passageways between Via del Babuino and via Margutta

There is one more level, even less visited: the interior courtyards. Many buildings on the street have courtyards with loggias, wells, ancient fragments set into the walls, and monumental staircases. They are not open to the public, and there is no organized route to visit them, but the gates often stand ajar during office hours, and you can see quite a bit from there. Palazzo Boncompagni Cerasi, the one that housed the statue of the Babuino for 80 years, is the most evocative case: imagining an ancient silenus abandoned in a private courtyard while outside the street kept carrying its name is the kind of short circuit that makes Rome hard to sum up.

The advice I give you for visiting Via del Babuino

The advice is one and precise: walk it downhill, from Piazza di Spagna toward Piazza del Popolo, and do it early in the morning. The reasons are three, and they are worth explaining in full.

The first is the light. Via del Babuino is oriented so that in the early morning the sun comes in low from the southeast and lights up the facades on the western side, leaving the other side in deep shade. That is the best condition for seeing the reliefs, cornices, balconies and portals, which in the middle of the day flatten into an even light with no character. Someone who arrives at noon sees a gray street. Someone who arrives at eight sees a sculpted one.

The second is the crowd. Piazza di Spagna from 10 on is one of the most crowded spots in Europe, and the flow spills onto the adjacent streets. At eight the Spanish Steps are almost empty and the Babuino can be walked without dodging anyone. At six in the afternoon the same street takes three times as long.

The third is the descent. From Piazza di Spagna to Piazza del Popolo you walk on a very slight downhill, and although the slope is minimal, over 600 meters of sanpietrini at the end of a day of sightseeing, you feel it. Above all, the ending is better: you come out into Piazza del Popolo, which is one of the most successful urban spaces in Rome, and from there you can climb to the Pincio for the sunset or go into Santa Maria del Popolo, which holds two Caravaggios in the Cerasi Chapel and the Chigi Chapel designed by Raphael. Ending a walk like this is better than starting it.

How much time to allow

For the street alone, walking it without stopping, 10 minutes is enough. To do it properly, with the two churches, the fountain, the search for the 18th-century niche at number 49a and a detour onto Via Margutta, you need from an hour and a half to two hours. Included in a broader day, Via del Babuino works as a link between Piazza di Spagna block, meaning the Barcaccia, the Spanish Steps and Trinità dei Monti, and Piazza del Popolo block, meaning the three churches, the obelisk and the climb to the Pincio. It is a connection that saves time rather than wasting it, because it replaces a subway ride with a walk that is itself a visit.

What to avoid

Avoid walking it in a rush between two appointments, because it is the kind of street that gives nothing back to someone who passes through distracted. Avoid Saturday afternoons, when stopping in front of the fountain means getting in someone's way. Avoid reducing it to a shopping stop: that would mean missing 600 meters of urban history to look at signs. And avoid expecting the fountain to be spectacular, because it isn't, and that is its appeal.

Accessibility and families

The street is passable with strollers and wheelchairs, with the caveat already mentioned about narrow sidewalks and the uneven surface. The metro stations at either end differ in their elevator situation and should be checked in advance by anyone who needs them. For children, the storytelling hook works very well: telling them the street is named after a statue considered as ugly as a monkey, and that for 80 years that statue was locked in a courtyard, turns a walk between palaces into a treasure hunt. The search for the niche with the dolphins at number 49a is the task that usually keeps them focused to the end.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

The fact is the twinning. On October 16, 2002, an official twinning was sealed between Via del Babuino and Madison Avenue in New York, and a plaque on the street commemorates it. It is a fact that appears in every write-up about the street and that practically nobody stops to explain, which is a shame, because it says a great deal about how Rome has chosen to represent itself in recent decades.

A twinning between streets, and not between cities, is an unusual arrangement. It serves to connect two urban axes that recognize a shared function: in this case, high-end retail, art galleries and the antiques trade. Madison Avenue, in its Upper East Side stretch, has a similar history of transformation from residential street to corridor of galleries and luxury shops, and the choice to link it to the Babuino rather than to Via dei Condotti shows that in 2002 the identity Via del Babuino claimed was artistic and antiquarian, not fashion.

Why the matter deserves more attention

The plaque can be read in a few seconds and very few people photograph it, yet it marks a transformation. Until the 1950s and 1960s the street was known mainly for its antique dealers and restoration workshops, with an ecosystem of craftspeople serving the art market and having its logistical base on Via Margutta. In the following decades that fabric thinned out, replaced by international brands: the 2002 twinning arrives when the replacement was already well advanced and looks like an attempt to put in writing an identity that the market was changing.

There is a second fact that is just as well known and just as little explored in depth, and it concerns the Café Notegen. Over the course of the 20th century, this historic café on Via del Babuino attracted a large number of intellectuals, many of whom became regular customers. Among the names remembered by tradition are Vincenzo Cardarelli, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Federico Fellini. The Notegen belonged to a precise geography of literary and film Rome, that of the cafés that functioned as an informal newsroom, office and meeting place for those who wrote, those who drew and those who produced. It was a system that tied together via Veneto, piazza del Popolo and the Babuino, and very little of it remains today.

On this point I want to be honest about the limits of the documentation. The presence of these figures is passed down through local memory and popular writing, and the exact dates of their visits cannot be reconstructed with the certainty that would be needed to list them one by one. The overall picture holds up. The individual episodes should be taken as tradition, not as verified chronicle.

The Right Photo to Take on Via del Babuino

The right photo is not the fountain. The Babuino fountain is low, set against the wall, protected by an iron railing and in shade for much of the day. Photographing it well takes patience, and it still doesn't produce a memorable image. The right photo is a different one, and it can be built in three versions, depending on how much time you have.

The First Version: The Tridente from Above

The photo that explains Via del Babuino better than any other is taken from the terrace of the Pincio, looking out over piazza del Popolo. From there you can see at once the obelisk in the center of the square, the two twin churches that act as wings, and the three streets of the Tridente that fan out: Via del Babuino on the left, Via del Corso in the center, and via di Ripetta on the right. It is a photograph that no description in words can replace, because it shows the entire urban plan in a single glance. Reach the Pincio by the Valadier ramps on the eastern side of the square, a five-minute uphill walk. The best time is late afternoon, when the sun is behind you and lights the facades. Sunset is the most beautiful moment and also the most crowded.

The Second Version: The Perspective Down the Street

Inside the street, the photo that works is the long perspective. Stand in the middle of the roadway at a time when no vehicles are passing, usually very early in the morning, and frame the line of facades stretching toward the far end. The result shows the regularity of the building front, the repetition of the balconies and, in the background, the bright opening of the square. If you look toward piazza di Spagna, you can make out the mass of the staircase at the far end. If you look toward piazza del Popolo, you can make out the obelisk. This second direction is the more effective one.

The Third Version: The Contrast of the Two Churches

The photo most interesting from a content point of view is the one that puts together, in the same frame or in two consecutive shots, the two bell towers with the small domes of Sant'Atanasio and the neo-Gothic spire of All Saints. They are two opposite ways of standing on a Roman street: one from the 16th century, Italian, horizontal, blending into the front, the other from the 19th century, English, vertical, in open contrast. Having them 200 meters apart on the same street is a singularity that deserves to be documented. For the spire, you need to step back onto the opposite sidewalk and raise the lens high. For Sant'Atanasio, it is better to move away toward piazza del Popolo and make use of the slight curve of the street.

A Detail Not to Miss

The detail is the 18th-century niche at number 49a, with its pilasters and decorative dolphins, which from 1738 to 1877 framed the statue and which today remains empty. Photographing an empty niche seems absurd until you know what it once held. Knowing that, it becomes the most eloquent image on the street. I suggest taking it and keeping it next to the photo of the statue in its current location. Together, the two images tell 140 years of relocations better than any caption could.

Some Important Events That Took Place Here in History

The history of Via del Babuino is the history of how Rome built its northern entrance, and it's worth putting it in order.

From the 14th Century to 1540: The Street Takes Shape

In the 1300s the street already existed under two names, via dell'Orto di Napoli and via del Cavalletto. It was a minor route in a northern Campo Marzio still made up of vegetable gardens and vineyards. In 1525, works commissioned by Clement VII straightened it and gave it the name via Clementina. It went from an inherited path to a planned street. In 1540, Paul III intervened, and the street took the name via Paolina, with the alternative name Trifaria tied to its role as one of the three axes of the Tridente.

1571 and 1576: The Water Concession and the Fountain

In 1571 Pope Pius V grants Alessandro Grandi some once d’acqua from the new Vergine aqueduct, on the condition that it be used to build a public fountain in honor of the pontiff. The fountain is reported completed by 1576 and is adorned with an ancient sculpture of a reclining silenus. From here, because of popular judgment about the statue's ugliness, the name that will replace all the others is born.

1573, 1577, 1580, 1583: the Greek church and the college

In 1573 Gregory XIII establishes the Congregation of the Greeks. In 1577 the Pontifical Greek College is approved. In 1580 Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santoro lays the first stone of the church of Sant’Atanasio, which is already finished by 1583, when the pope celebrates the first Greek-rite Mass there. The street thus acquires an institutional presence of international scope that will mark its character for centuries.

16th century: the talking statues and the babuinate

From the 1500s onward, the custom of posting anonymous messages of criticism and satire against the rulers on the talking statues becomes established in Rome. The Babuino becomes part of the group of six talking statues, and the texts posted on it take the name babuinate.

1738: the eighteenth-century niche

The statue is placed in an architectural niche with pilasters and decorative dolphins, in keeping with the taste of the time. This arrangement lasts for nearly a century and a half, and traces of it remain at house number 49a.

1771: Clement XIV's clock

Pope Clement XIV gives a clock to the church of Sant’Atanasio. It is placed above the left bell tower and oriented toward the College building instead of the street, because it served the college students.

1877: the dismantling

Sewer works for the new capital lead to the dismantling of the fountain complex. The statue is removed and ends up in the courtyard of Palazzo Boncompagni Cerasi, where it will remain for 80 years. This is the lowest point in the monument's history, and it coincides with the most aggressive period of urban transformation Rome has ever known.

1880 and 1887: the Anglican church

Between 1880 and 1887 the Anglican church of All Saints is built to a design by George Edmund Street with his son Arthur Edmund Street and the collaboration of Pio Barucci. The first stone is laid on April 9, 1882, and the church opens for worship on April 10, 1887. The building bears witness to the weight of the British community living in the neighborhood.

1937 and 1957: the bell tower and the return of the Babuino

The bell tower of the Anglican church, octagonal on the outside and circular on the inside, is completed only in 1937. It reaches 42.7 meters, with a travertine spire. In 1957 the statue of the Babuino is recovered and returned to the street, placed again at Sant’Atanasio dei Greci and surrounded by the recovered basin. This is the arrangement you see today.

October 16, 2002: the twinning with Madison Avenue

The twinning between Via del Babuino and Madison Avenue in New York is sealed, and it is commemorated by a plaque on the street.

2007: the last restoration

A restoration work affects the fountain, and the protective iron railing that now separates it from the street is installed, effectively closing the long era of graffiti on the adjacent wall.

Who has passed through Via del Babuino

The street has passed through the Rome of the Grand Tour, that of the literary cafés, and that of cinema, and each of these periods has left names here.

The first group is the popes, who here are not a scholarly detail but the material commissioners of the street. Clement VII straightened it in 1525 and gave it his own name. Paul III took it up again in 1540 and renamed it. Pius V granted the water in 1571 from which the fountain arises. Gregory XIII established the Congregation of the Greeks in 1573. Clement XIV gave the clock to Sant’Atanasio in 1771.

The second group is the architects: Giacomo Della Porta and Martino Longhi the Elder for the Greek church, George Edmund Street and Arthur Edmund Street with Pio Barucci for the Anglican church. Giuseppe Valadier also worked at both ends of the street, redesigning Piazza del Popolo and the ramps of the Pincio, and his name remains tied to one of the palazzi on the street.

The third group is the twentieth-century intellectuals linked to the Café Notegen. Vincenzo Cardarelli was the founder of the Ronda and a central figure in Rome's literary scene between the two world wars. Gabriele D’Annunzio spent the years of his journalistic and social formation in Rome. Federico Fellini lived and worked in the neighborhood for a long time, and he made the Tridente one of the recurring backdrops of his imagination.

There is finally a category of passersby who have no proper names and who count more than all the others: the pilgrims and travelers who for centuries entered Rome through Porta del Popolo and took this street to reach the heart of the city. The Tridente was built for them, and Via del Babuino, which led toward the hill and the neighborhoods of foreigners, was the arm that led to the Rome of resident foreigners: English, Germans, Russians, Americans, who between the 19th and 20th centuries filled the houses between this street and Villa Medici.

When to go to Via del Babuino and when to avoid it

The best season is the in-between one: April, May, late September and October, when the light is good, the temperature lets you walk without suffering, and the tourist crowds, though high, are not what they are in July. November and February have the advantage of an almost clear street and the drawback of short days, which reduce the window of useful light for photographing.

The best time is early morning, between 7 and 9, for the light and crowd reasons already mentioned. The second good window is late evening, after 21:00, when public lighting outlines the facades and the street empties. The fountain is lit at those hours and photographs better than it does by day.

Avoid: Saturday afternoons in any season, spring bridge weeks, sale days, and the midday hours of July and August, when the heat reflected from the facades makes the 600 meters feel much longer than they are. Also avoid days of demonstrations affecting the Historic Center, because the area may be closed to vehicles and foot traffic becomes unmanageable. It's best to check first before planning your day.

What's around Via del Babuino

The street is the hinge of one of the densest areas of Rome, and from both ends it opens onto a system of visits that fit together without needing public transport.

At the northern end is Piazza del Popolo, with the Flaminio Obelisk, the twin churches, and the basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, which houses two canvases by Caravaggio and the Chigi Chapel. From the square you climb to the Pincio and from there enter Villa Borghese, where you'll find the Galleria Borghese, with mandatory booking and limited time slots. Going down toward the Tiber instead, you reach the Mausoleum of Augustus and the Ara Pacis in a few minutes.

At the southern end is Piazza di Spagna with the Barcaccia Fountain and the staircase that climbs to Trinità dei Monti. Just beyond it opens Via dei Condotti, and climbing viale Trinità dei Monti you reach Villa Medici. Running parallel to the Babuino is Via del Corso. Continuing east, you reach the Trevi Fountain in a quarter of an hour. To the west, crossing the Corso and the fabric of Campo Marzio, you reach Piazza Navona.

Quick questions about Via del Babuino

Do you pay to visit Via del Babuino?

No. It's a public street, always open, with no ticket or reservation required. The churches along it have their own hours tied to services.

Why is it called Via del Babuino?

From the nickname the Romans gave to the ancient statue of a silenus placed on the fountain built after the water concession of 1571. The sculpture was judged so ugly that it was compared to a monkey.

What names did it have before?

Via dell'Orto di Napoli and via del Cavalletto in the 14th century, via Clementina from 1525 under Clement VII, via Paolina from 1540 under Paul III, with the alternative name Trifaria.

Where exactly is the Babuino fountain?

Next to the church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci, a little more than halfway along, on the left side for those coming down from Piazza del Popolo. The original 18th-century niche, with the pilasters and dolphins, remains at number 49a.

Is the Babuino really a talking statue?

Yes, it's one of Rome's six talking statues, along with Pasquino, Madama Lucrezia, Marforio, il Facchino and l'Abate Luigi. The anonymous satirical texts posted on it were called babuinate.

How long does it take to walk it?

10 minutes walking without stopping, or from an hour and a half to two hours to see the two churches, the fountain, the niche and a detour onto via Margutta.

How do you get there by metro?

Take Line A: Flaminio station at the end of Piazza del Popolo, Spagna station at the opposite end. Entering at one and exiting at the other avoids walking the same road again.

Can you get there by car?

Not recommended: the street is in the Zona a Traffico Limitato of the Historic Center, and electronic gates fine unauthorized access. The practical solution is the underground parking under the Pincio and a walk down to Piazza del Popolo.

What is the difference between Via del Babuino and Via Margutta?

Via Margutta began as a service street behind the palazzi of Via del Babuino, and over the centuries it became the street of artists' studios. The Babuino is the axis of representation and passage, and Margutta is its quiet reverse side. They are 50 meters apart and seem like two different cities.

In our view, Via del Babuino is the most underrated street in the center of Rome. Tens of thousands of people walk it every day as a link between two famous squares, and almost none of them realize they are walking on a 16th-century urban design, past a Greek church from 1583, under an English Neo-Gothic spire, and beside an ancient statue that was kept shut in a courtyard for 80 years while the street kept carrying its name. Just 20 more minutes and the street completely changes meaning.

Frequently asked questions about Via del Babuino

Do you have to pay to visit Via del Babuino?

No, Via del Babuino is a public street in Rome, always open, with no ticket or reservation required. The churches that open onto it have their own hours tied to religious services, but the street itself, in the rione Campo Marzio, can be walked freely at any time of day.

Why is it called Via del Babuino?

Via del Babuino takes its name from the nickname Romans gave to the ancient statue of a silenus placed on the fountain built after the water concession of 1571. The sculpture was judged so ugly that it was compared to a monkey, a babuino indeed, and the nickname ended up giving its name to the whole street.

What does Via del Babuino connect?

Via del Babuino runs diagonally through the rione Campo Marzio and joins two of Rome's most visited squares. From Piazza del Popolo it runs southeast until it comes out in Piazza di Spagna, almost at the foot of the Trinità dei Monti staircase, forming one of the three avenues of the Tridente.

What is the best time of year to visit Via del Babuino?

The best season for Via del Babuino is the shoulder season: April, May, late September and October. The light is good, the temperature makes it possible to walk without suffering, and tourist crowds, though high, are not like July's. The best time of day is still early morning.

What is Via Margutta and how is it connected to Via del Babuino?

Via Margutta runs parallel to Via del Babuino, on the side facing the Pincio, and it did not begin as an independent street. For centuries it was the back of the palazzi on Via del Babuino, with stables, warehouses, servants' quarters and craft workshops supporting the noble front of the main street.

Which New York street is Via del Babuino twinned with?

Via del Babuino has been twinned with Madison Avenue in New York since October 16, 2002, and a plaque along the street commemorates the event. It is a twinning between shopping streets, not between cities, and it appears in nearly every entry dedicated to Via del Babuino.

What is the best time to photograph Via del Babuino?

The tip for Via del Babuino is to walk it downhill, from Piazza di Spagna toward Piazza del Popolo, early in the morning. At that hour the sun comes in low from the southeast and lights the facades on the western side of the street, leaving the other side in deep shade that gives the photos depth.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences. For a guided walk through the Tridente with a licensed tour leader, start from the TourLeaderPro contact page. Tour operators who build itineraries in the Historic Center of Rome will find the consulting service in the section dedicated to tour operators.

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