Piazza della Repubblica is one of the most beautiful squares in Rome, and its Fountain of the Naiads is perhaps the most sensual, and the most talked-about, in the whole city.
The square was conceived at the end of the nineteenth century, when Rome, freshly made capital, wanted to give itself a modern face, with wide tree-lined streets and monumental fountains modelled on the French boulevards. But behind its bronze nymphs hides a scandal that set the whole city talking.
Would you like to know its secrets?
Let’s go!
Rome after the Unification of Italy
The laying out of Piazza della Repubblica came at a time of great change: Rome suddenly found itself the capital of a new kingdom and went through a deep transition, turning from a holy city into a secular one.
In those same years Via Nazionale was opened, to connect Termini station with Via del Corso, and the Altare della Patria, the courthouse and many other landmark buildings of the new capital were built. Back then the square was called Piazza dell’Esedra: the name came from the great exedra of the ancient Baths of Diocletian, whose semicircular outline is still traced today by the double colonnade designed by the architect Gaetano Koch.
Overlooking this same square is the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, carved by Michelangelo out of the tepidarium of the baths, one more of Rome’s many faces, where ancient and modern constantly overlap.
The Fountain of the Naiads
Perhaps you didn’t know it, but the naiads are ancient water deities of Greco-Roman mythology: maidens tied to fresh waters, credited with healing powers. The fountain was born as the terminal display of the Aqua Marcia aqueduct (the ancient Roman Aqua Marcia, brought back to life by Pope Pius IX in 1870): the basin was built in 1888 to a design by Alessandro Guerrieri, with four plaster lions.
The lions were soon replaced by the figures we admire today: in 1901 the Palermo-born sculptor Mario Rutelli, great-grandfather of former Rome mayor Francesco Rutelli, set in place four bronze groups, four nymphs each reclining on an animal that symbolises a form of water: the Naiad of the Lakes on a swan, the one of the Rivers on a river monster, the one of the Oceans on a horse and the one of the Underground Waters on a dragon.
At the centre stands Glaucus, the sea god who clutches a huge fish and seems to bridle the power of the water with sheer strength of arm. He too has a chequered history: the first version, from 1911, was disliked and moved elsewhere; the definitive one arrived the following year, in 1912.
The scandal of the Fountain of the Naiads
The nymphs’ naked bodies, glistening with water, struck the city’s most conservative wing, which of course looked to the Vatican, as an immoral spectacle.
Once the work was finished, a wooden fence was kept around the fountain to hide it from view, while the municipality decided what to do. But the barrier had the opposite effect: the coming and going of young people peeping at the statues through the loose boards only fuelled the curiosity and the sense of scandal across Rome.
Fortunately the city embraced progressive ideas and, on 10 February 1901, let the Romans tear down the fence, freeing the beautiful nymphs for good. Since then the fountain has been the beating heart of the square, and one of the most photographed spots in the city.
How to visit Piazza della Repubblica
The square and the fountain are a short walk from Termini station (Metro line A, Repubblica – Teatro dell’Opera stop) and can be admired freely, for nothing, at any hour: at sunset, when the jets of water light up, they’re worth the stroll on their own.
If you want to turn the stop into a proper art visit, right next door are the Baths of Diocletian, home to the National Roman Museum: book your ticket for the Baths of Diocletian and round off this corner of Rome. And if you love stories of Roman scandals and masterpieces, don’t miss the life of Michelangelo, the artist who turned a bath hall into a basilica right here.
And you, standing before those nymphs that made half of Rome blush a century ago, can you still picture the scandal? Stop and look at them for a moment: it’s the best way to grasp how much life hides in a square that looks like nothing more than an elegant crossroads.
