San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane: Borromini's Tiny Masterpiece
Why is it significant?
Stand at the crossroads and turn slowly on the spot. In each corner, a fountain is set into the building: a river god, another river god, and two goddesses. And if you look down each of the four streets, you will see an obelisk or a city gate at the far end.
Key Facts
| Place | San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane: Borromini's Tiny Masterpiece |
|---|---|
| Address | Via del Quirinale 23, 00187 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90170, 12.49080 |
| Part of Walk | Rivals on the Quirinal: Bernini vs Borromini in Baroque Rome |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the crossroads and turn slowly on the spot. In each corner, a fountain is set into the building: a river god, another river god, and two goddesses. And if you look down each of the four streets, you will see an obelisk or a city gate at the far end. Pope Sixtus the Fifth laid out these long straight streets in the 1580s so that pilgrims could find their way between the great churches, and later popes closed the views with monuments.
On one corner stands the church that made Borromini's name. In 1634, a small order of Spanish Trinitarian friars, the barefoot ones who ransomed Christian slaves, asked him for a church and a monastery on this tiny, awkward plot. They had almost no money. He worked for them for free. And he gave them a building so small, the story goes, that the whole church would fit inside one of the four piers holding up the dome of Saint Peter's.
Look at the facade first. It is not flat. It ripples, concave, convex, concave, as if the stone were breathing in and out. It was the last thing Borromini designed, and he did not live to see it finished. Now go inside and tip your head back. The oval dome is covered in a honeycomb of crosses, octagons and hexagons, and they get smaller as they rise, so the dome looks far higher than it is. A trick of pure geometry, in plain white plaster. No gold, no marble, no paintings needed.
Borromini was a tormented man. Moody, suspicious, convinced that the world preferred Bernini's charm to his genius. In the summer of 1667, ill and sleepless, he threw himself on his own sword. He lived long enough to dictate an account of what he had done, and to receive the last rites. He was laid to rest in the tomb of his old master and relative, Carlo Maderno.
But his ideas outlived him. The friars were so proud of their church that, the story goes, visitors from across Europe begged them for copies of its plans. Leave the palace side of the crossroads behind you for now and walk east along Via Venti Settembre, towards a church that holds Bernini's most theatrical scene.