Piazza Navona Rome (2026): Bernini's Fountain, the Christmas Market and What's Nearby (2026)

The short version. Walk the length of the square, spend ten minutes at the Four Rivers fountain, step into Sant'Agnese in Agone if it's open, then walk five minutes to the Pantheon. Get a gelato on Via del Governo Vecchio on the way. From 1 December to 6 January, the square has its Christmas stalls. For a drink above the square, Terrazza Borromini is in our guide to Rome's rooftop bars.

Why it's that shape. The square is laid exactly over the Stadium of Domitian, inaugurated in 86 AD, a masonry stadium for athletic games that held about 30,000 people. The houses and palaces around the edge stand on its seating, and its remains lie 5 to 6 meters below the street. The name comes from 'agones', the games held there. Between the 17th and mid-19th centuries the square was partly flooded on August weekends to cool Romans down.

The stadium museum is closed. The underground archaeological area of the Stadium of Domitian is listed by Rome's official tourism site as closed for restoration, with no reopening date given.

The Fountain of the Four Rivers is Gian Lorenzo Bernini's masterpiece in the middle of the square, commissioned by Pope Innocent X Pamphilj, whose family palace and the church of Sant'Agnese were going up on the square at the time. It was built between 1648 and 1651 and unveiled on 12 June 1651. On a travertine rock sit four giant figures for four continents' rivers: the Danube (Europe), the Ganges (Asia), the Nile (Africa) and the Río de la Plata (the Americas). An ancient obelisk recovered from the Circus of Maxentius rises above them, topped by the Pamphilj dove with an olive branch.

Look for the Nile with its head covered. The popular story is that it's hiding from Borromini's church opposite, out of Bernini's rivalry with him; it's a legend, not history. The two end fountains are older: the Fontana del Moro (south) and the Fontana del Nettuno (north) are both by Giacomo della Porta.

Sant'Agnese in Agone is the domed church on the west side, facing the fountain. It was begun by Carlo and Girolamo Rainaldi and finished by Francesco Borromini, who substantially reworked it, and it marks the traditional site of St Agnes's martyrdom; the shrine is in the crypt, where restoration work resumed in May 2025. It's closed on Mondays and from 1pm to 3pm. Next door, Palazzo Pamphilj has been the Brazilian embassy since 1960.

The Chiostro del Bramante, two minutes from the north-west corner of the square, is a Renaissance cloister by Donato Bramante that now hosts changing exhibitions. An adult ticket is €19 at the desk. If you don't want the exhibition, its café-bistro is inside the cloister.

Frigidarium, on Via del Governo Vecchio about four minutes west of the square, has been making gelato since 1988 and lists its hours as 10.30am to 1am (its website doesn't say which days), so it's the easy gelato stop before or after dinner. The street itself is worth the walk, with small shops and restaurants. For more, see the best gelato in Rome.

The Pantheon is five minutes' walk east and pairs naturally with Piazza Navona. Since 1 July 2026 a ticket is €7 (it was €5), €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, and free for under-18s, Rome residents and on the first Sunday of the month. Book on the Ministry's Musei Italiani portal, where each month's slots are released around the middle of the month before; the Roma Pass and Omnia Card aren't accepted. It's a working church, so cover your shoulders, and ticket sales stop an hour before Mass.

Campo de' Fiori is five minutes south, and it's a different kind of square: a market every morning from Monday to Saturday (it moved here from Piazza Navona in 1869), and bars and restaurants in the evening. The statue in the middle, by Ettore Ferrari (1889), is the philosopher Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake on this spot for heresy on 17 February 1600.