Piazza di Spagna

Piazza di Spagna
Piazza di Spagna
City square
	Piazza di Spagna viewed from the Spanish Steps
Location	Rome, Italy
	; Click on the map for a fullscreen view
	Coordinates: 41°54′22″N 12°28′56″E / 41.906°N 12.4821°E

The Piazza di Spagna is a square in the centre of Rome, the capital of Italy. It lies at the foot of the Spanish Steps and owes its name to the Palazzo di Spagna, the seat of the Embassy of Spain to the Holy See. The Column of the Immaculate Conception is in the square.

The square

Piazza di Spagna and Via Condotti in an engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

In the middle of the square is the Fontana della Barcaccia, dating to the beginning of the Baroque period, sculpted by Pietro Bernini and his son Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

At the right corner of the Spanish Steps rises the house of the English poet John Keats, who lived there until his death in 1821: it is now a museum dedicated to him and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley, displaying books and memorabilia of English romanticism. At the left corner, there is the Babington's tea room, founded in 1893.

The side near Via Frattina is overlooked by the two façades (the main one, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and the side one created by Francesco Borromini) of the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide, a property of the Holy See. In front of it, actually in a part of Piazza di Spagna named Piazza Mignanelli, rises the Column of the Immaculate Conception, erected in 1856, two years after the proclamation of the dogma.

The streets connecting to the square are known for their luxury shopping stores.^[1]