Description
The Barcaccia Fountain is the boat-shaped fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps, in Piazza di Spagna. Low and almost level with the water, it's the spot in the square where everyone stops for a photo or to catch their breath.
Pietro Bernini carved it in travertine between 1626 and 1629 for Pope Urban VIII Barberini; his son Gian Lorenzo helped him and probably finished it. The boat, with identical bow and stern and very low sides, seems about to sink in an oval basin below street level.
The water pours from two suns with human faces and from four spouts shaped like cannon mouths; at the ends are the pope's coats of arms with the three Barberini bees.
That shape was born of a limitation: the Acqua Vergine arrives here with little pressure, far too little for jets and cascades. A popular story, though, says the idea came from a boat left stranded in the square after the Tiber flood of 1598.
Pietro Bernini carved it in travertine between 1626 and 1629 for Pope Urban VIII Barberini; his son Gian Lorenzo helped him and probably finished it. The boat, with identical bow and stern and very low sides, seems about to sink in an oval basin below street level.
The water pours from two suns with human faces and from four spouts shaped like cannon mouths; at the ends are the pope's coats of arms with the three Barberini bees.
That shape was born of a limitation: the Acqua Vergine arrives here with little pressure, far too little for jets and cascades. A popular story, though, says the idea came from a boat left stranded in the square after the Tiber flood of 1598.