piazza Barberini

Piazza Barberini is a busy traffic square at the foot of Via Veneto, named after the Barberini family whose palace sits a short walk away. At the centre stands Bernini's Triton Fountain of 1642-43: four dolphins hold up an open scallop shell on which Triton blows a jet of water through a conch. Pope Urban VIII, a Barberini, commissioned the fountain to ornament the newly opened edge of the quarter; the family's bee crest appears all over it. Bernini also placed the smaller Fountain of the Bees at the corner of Via Veneto. Today city traffic streams around the basin, the Metro Line A surfaces alongside; despite the noise it remains a key stop for Bernini's fountain art and a gateway to the Galleria Nazionale inside Palazzo Barberini.