The Fontana Maggiore stands in the middle of Piazza IV Novembre, it costs nothing, it has no opening hours, and most visitors photograph it from a distance and walk on. It is a mistake I understand: from far away it looks like a nineteenth-century fountain in a beautiful square.
Up close it is another thing altogether. The two marble basins carry fifty reliefs carved between 1275 and 1278 by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and together they tell the whole world as it was imagined in the thirteenth century: the twelve months with the work of the fields, the signs of the zodiac, the seven liberal arts, the Bible, the founding of Rome, two of Aesop’s fables and the saints of the city.
I wrote this article because those reliefs can be read one by one while standing in front of them, with a bit of patience, and nobody says so.
Why a fountain was the most important thing a city could build
What is the point of spending a fortune on a basin of water? Perugia sits on top of a hill, and all through the Middle Ages it had no running water: it was carried up from the springs on muleback. In 1254 the commune decided to build an aqueduct from Monte Pacciano, four kilometres away, with a system of siphons that pushed the water all the way to the top.
It took twenty years. When the water reached the square, in 1278, the city wanted its arrival point to be a monument: not a basin but a political statement, set between the cathedral and the town hall, that is between the two powers, and paid for by the commune.
To build it they called in the two finest sculptors around, who had just finished the pulpit of Siena cathedral.
How it is made: three parts, three materials
The fountain is built in stages. At the bottom there is a polygonal basin with twenty-five sides, with two reliefs per side, that is fifty panels. Above it, a smaller basin with twelve sides, with twenty-four statuettes at the corners. On top, a bronze bowl with three nymphs holding an amphora, from which the water pours out.
The sequence of materials is not accidental: white and pink marble at the bottom, marble above, bronze at the top, that is from the heaviest and most earthbound to the lightest and most precious, going up. And the number of sides drops from twenty-five to twelve to three, like a pyramid narrowing.
The lower basin: the year, the work and the knowledge
The big basin is the one to read. The fifty panels are arranged in pairs and organised by theme.
The twelve months are the finest part and the easiest: each has its own activity, and they are real scenes of peasant labour, not symbols. January is a man keeping warm in front of the fire, March prunes, May rides out with a falcon, June reaps, September harvests the grapes, November sows, December kills the pig. Next to each month is the matching zodiac sign.
Then there are the seven liberal arts, that is the school curriculum of the Middle Ages: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, each with its own figure and its own instruments. And philosophy, which governs them all.
There are biblical episodes (the creation of Adam, Adam and Eve, Samson, David and Goliath), the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus and the two eagles, and the saints who matter to Perugia.
The two Aesop fables, which are the strangest thing of all
In among the Bible, science and the history of Rome, the Pisano put two of Aesop’s fables: the wolf and the crane, and the wolf and the lamb.
In the first, the crane pulls a bone out of the wolf’s throat with its beak and then asks for its reward; the wolf answers that the reward is having been allowed to take its head back out of his jaws. In the second, the wolf accuses the lamb of muddying his water and eats it anyway, because the pretext only served to justify what he had already decided.
They are not decoration. On a fountain paid for by the commune, in front of the palace where justice was administered, two fables about the abuse of power and the ingratitude of those who rule are a message, and in the thirteenth century anyone passing by knew how to read it.
Father and son, two different hands
Can you tell with the naked eye who carved what? For the most part yes, and trying is the best way to really look at these reliefs. Nicola Pisano was about fifty at the time and came from the pulpit of the Pisa baptistery and the one in Siena cathedral; Giovanni, his son, was barely over twenty and was becoming the most dramatic of Italian sculptors.
Scholars tell the two hands apart fairly well: the more composed, broader figures, with drapery falling in heavy regular folds, are by Nicola, who looked to Roman sarcophagi; the more nervous ones, with twisted bodies and heads jutting out of the frame, are by Giovanni.
It is the same pair you find on the Siena pulpit, and the difference between the two is one of the moments when Italian sculpture stops being medieval.
What you see today, and what you do not
An honest warning: many of the reliefs you see in the square are copies. The fountain has been restored several times, the last between 1948 and 1949 and then in the nineties, and some original parts badly damaged by frost and smog have been replaced and taken into the museum.
The three bronze nymphs at the top, on the other hand, are original, and they are attributed to Giovanni Pisano.
Practical information
Data checked on 4 September 2026 on the website of the Comune di Perugia. Information changes: check again before you set off.
Tickets. The fountain stands in Piazza IV Novembre, it is out in the open and you can see it free of charge at any hour.
Opening hours. There are none. Careful with the season, though: in winter the fountain is protected against frost with a covering structure, and during that period the reliefs are not visible. If you are coming for them, avoid the coldest months or check first.
Getting there. Piazza IV Novembre is the exact centre of the city, between the cathedral of San Lorenzo and the Palazzo dei Priori. From the Pincetto minimetrò stop it is a five-minute walk uphill.
How long it takes. Half an hour is enough to walk around it and read the reliefs at leisure. Ten minutes if you just want to look at it.
Where to go next
The Pisano had just finished the pulpit of Siena cathedral, and the same family worked in the complex of piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa. Fifty metres from the fountain, inside the Palazzo dei Priori, you will find the works of the National Gallery of Umbria, which keeps the sculptures by Arnolfo di Cambio from the city’s second fountain.
The full itinerary is in What to see in Perugia in 2 days.
Photographs by Diego Delso, Georges Jansoone and Giovanni Dall’Orto from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA licences.
