Piazza della Repubblica

Piazza della Repubblica is a half-circle square a few steps from Termini station; the older name Piazza dell'Esedra is still in everyday use. Its shape traces the great exedra of the 3rd-century Baths of Diocletian, whose walls still stand under the square and inside Michelangelo's conversion next door, Santa Maria degli Angeli. The curving colonnaded arcades framing the square today were designed by Gaetano Koch between 1887 and 1898 as a parade square for the young capital of the Kingdom of Italy. In the centre, Mario Rutelli's Fountain of the Naiads (1901-12) erupts with four bronze nymphs each riding a water creature - judged too erotic at the unveiling and briefly covered up. Today it is a churn of travellers heading for Termini, salads at the arcade bars, and buses peeling off in every direction.