There are two ways of walking through the historic centre of Rome. One is the normal way. The other is noticing that, in about a dozen places, the walls are not straight.
They recede, they push forward, they twist. The facades look like cloth rather than stone, the domes stretch, the lanterns do things no other architect ever tried. These are the works of Francesco Borromini, and they all sit inside a square two kilometres by two.
The catch is that half of those places are now closed, under restoration, or have become an embassy. So this guide is not a list: it is a division between what you can visit and what you can only look at, with the order that makes sense.
Who he was, in three paragraphs
He was born in 1599 in Bissone, on Lake Lugano, and his name was Francesco Castelli. He arrived in Rome as a boy, as a stonecutter, and worked on the building site of St Peter’s under Carlo Maderno, a relative of his who became his master. He changed his surname to Borromini later.
When Maderno died, in 1629, the site passed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who was a year older than him and already the favourite artist of the popes. Borromini worked for him, drew for him, and in 1634 the two parted ways.
What really separates the two, beyond talent? From that moment their careers keep touching and never resemble each other. Bernini is a courtier, theatrical, prolific, well liked; Borromini is solitary, obsessive, difficult with his patrons, and took his own life in August 1667, asking to be buried without a name in his master’s tomb.
What follows is what he left in the streets.
What you can really visit
These are the three stops to build the day around, because an open door is an open door.
San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane
His first work on his own and his last building site: a church twelve metres wide, an oval dome whose coffers shrink as they rise, a cloister with cut-off corners, a crypt with the chapel where he meant to be buried and was not.
It is the stop that explains all the others, and it is open every weekday, free. I tell it in full in San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane.
The perspective gallery at Palazzo Spada
A colonnade eight metres and eighty-two centimetres long that looks thirty-five, with a sixty-centimetre statue that looks life-sized. It is the only paid stop on the route, six euros, five minutes from Campo de’ Fiori.
How the trick works, and how to look at it without spoiling it, is in Borromini’s perspective gallery at Palazzo Spada.
The four churches
Sant’Agnese in Agone on Piazza Navona, the nave of St John Lateran, the bell tower of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte and San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where his tomb is. All free, all open, all with different hours to check beforehand.
I have lined them up, with the order of visit, in Borromini in Rome’s churches.
What you cannot visit today
Here the answer changes, and it is worth knowing before you find yourself in front of a closed door.
Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza is his most celebrated work after San Carlino, the one with the spiral lantern, and it is closed for restoration. The agreement to reopen it was signed in July 2025 and the reopening was announced for the end of that year, but at the check on 30 August 2026 the rectory still describes it as closed. The courtyard of the Sapienza, however, can be crossed, and from there you see almost everything: Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza.
Propaganda Fide, the Oratorio dei Filippini, Palazzo Falconieri and Palazzo Pamphilj are a Vatican department, a complex under restoration, a foreign academy and an embassy. They are looked at from the street, and the article on the Borromini you cannot visit says which spot to look from and how, in the rare cases when it is possible, to get in.
There is also something that is not by Borromini but has Borromini in it: the spiral staircase of Palazzo Barberini, which he designed as an assistant while the site belonged to Maderno and then to Bernini. You climb it with the museum ticket, and you will find it in the article on Palazzo Barberini and its artworks.
The one-day itinerary
Everything is walkable except the Lateran. The order below is built around opening hours, which are the real constraint.
Morning, from 10. Start on the Quirinal with San Carlino, which opens at 10 and closes at one: it is the stop you cannot move. A hundred metres away is Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, and the comparison is worth the ten minutes it asks. Then walk down towards Piazza Barberini and, if you want the spiral staircase, go into Palazzo Barberini.
Midday. Walk to Piazza di Spagna and turn into Via di Propaganda: the curving wall reads better with the sun high. From there, five minutes to Sant’Andrea delle Fratte for the bell tower, bearing in mind that the church opens in the afternoon.
Early afternoon. Cross the centre towards Piazza Navona: Sant’Agnese in Agone reopens at 15:00, and two hundred metres away is the courtyard of the Sapienza with Sant’Ivo’s spiral. On the west side of the square is Palazzo Pamphilj.
Late afternoon. Head down towards the river: Oratorio dei Filippini on Piazza della Chiesa Nuova, Palazzo Falconieri on Via Giulia, and the perspective gallery at Palazzo Spada, remembering that the last admission to the Secret Garden is at 18:30.
The close. San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, at the start of Via Giulia, where the slab with his name is set in the floor. It is the right place to finish, and it is five minutes from Spada.
The Lateran does not fit into this day: take it another time, by metro, together with the rest of the basilica.
Why all of this fits into two kilometres
Why should the works of an architect who practised for forty years all sit inside the historic centre? The answer says something about the profession in the seventeenth century.
Borromini worked for Roman patrons: popes, cardinals, religious orders, families whose palace was in the district. There were no international competitions and no commissions in other cities that could be followed from a distance, and he in particular ran his sites in person, arguing with the master masons and redrawing as the work went on.
The result, for anyone visiting Rome today, is a piece of luck: the complete works of one of the greatest architects in Europe can be seen on foot, in a day, without ever taking transport.
Practical information
Details checked on 30 August 2026 on the pages of the individual institutions. Church hours change with services and with the season, and two stops on this route have tight constraints: San Carlino closes at one and reopens in the afternoon, Sant’Andrea delle Fratte mainly opens after 16:00.
What it costs. Almost nothing. The only compulsory ticket is the Galleria Spada, 6 euros. Palazzo Barberini is optional. Everything else is free.
How long. A full day for the historic centre, half a day for the short version (San Carlino, Piazza Navona, Spada). The Lateran counts separately.
What shoes. The full route is about six kilometres on cobbles, with two climbs: the one up to the Quirinal and the one up to Piazza di Spagna.
If it rains. The indoor stops are San Carlino, the churches and the Galleria Spada; the facades of Propaganda Fide and the Oratorio can still be seen, but badly.
The route passes through Piazza Navona, and beneath the square the Stadium of Domitian still lies, explaining its elongated shape: it can be visited on a guided tour of the underground, which also tells the story of the rivalry with Bernini in the places where it began.
What to see nearby
The other protagonist of this story has itineraries of his own: Bernini’s fountains in Rome, Bernini’s works in St Peter’s, those in the churches of Rome and the ten works to know.
The direct comparison between the two, with the anecdotes Romans still tell, is in Bernini and Borromini.
If you are putting the trip together, what to see in Rome in 3 days fits these stops in with the rest of the city.
Photo credits. Piazza Navona: Wolfgang Moroder, CC BY-SA 3.0. Interior of San Carlino: Livioandronico2013, CC BY-SA 4.0. Both from Wikimedia Commons.
