Piazza del Popolo

Roma Capitale dates the urbanisation of the square from the second half of the sixteenth century, with a first fountain by Giacomo Della Porta, today in piazza Nicosia, and the obelisk raised in 1589. The Sovrintendenza gives the fuller sequence: the first fountain in 1572 by Della Porta, architect of the Roman people; the obelisk in 1589 under Sixtus V; the gate transformed by Bernini and the twin churches built through the 1600s; and the redesign of the whole square begun by Giuseppe Valadier in 1811, continued with the French architect L. M. Berthault in the Napoleonic years and finished in 1828, producing a great ellipse centred on the obelisk and closed by two hemicycles. It was restored and pedestrianised in 1997 and 1998.