Thank You, ArtH297

Although I wish I was living in Rome for seven weeks purely for fun, I am taking classes, one of which mandated this blog. We had to pick a theme and a place to write about a few times each week, and I feel like it took me forever to decide which-out of the hundreds in the city-I should do. I decided to concentrate on the theme of fountains and the beautiful place of Piazza Navona.


I learned of Navona in my ArtH297 class last spring, and the name has always stuck with me. Being able to see it firsthand was amazing. It is different than most piazzas in Rome due to its shape, which is of Domitian's Stadium. Athletic competitions used to be held there, and the stadium could hold around 33,000 people. Today, every day is filled with artists in the center and street performers strumming guitars around the sphere. There are multiple ristorantes circling the center, and one must be careful of the sly Italian waiter ready to lure you in for some food - my classmates and I were not so lucky during our second visit. Piazza Navona is a place to sit and relax in the warm summer sun; it is also the place where one can enter a gelateria and fall in love with gelato, helping to cool one off when the sun becomes too much. It was where I first tried and subsequently fell in love with the delicious dessert, enuring that Piazza Navona will always hold a special place in my heart.


1. Publishing, DK. Rome (Eyewitness Travel Guides). New York: DK Travel, 2006.