The Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps, Piazza di Spagna, Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti—by whatever name you call it, this is one of Rome's prime outdoor living rooms, an elegant gathering place for locals and tourists alike

The graceful off-center curves of the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti (a.k.a. the Spanish Steps; see sidebar below to right) rising from the hourglass Piazza di Spagna are covered with bright azaleas in spring, a life-sized nativity scene in winter, and teem with visitors, Roman teens, poseurs, Italians meeting for the passeggiata, and tour groups year-round.

What's in a Name?
One of the most famous and visited sights in all of Rome is the Stairs of Trinity of the Mountains. Never heard of it? That's because you know them as "The Spanish Steps," a reference to the fact that they rise from the Piazza di Spagna ("Spanish Square"), whereas Italians call the stairs after where they lead: up to the church of Trinità dei Monti. So, why Piazza di Spagna in the first place? The Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican lives on the square.

The steps were built in 1723–26 by Francesco De Sanctis, not on behalf of the Spanish, but for the French as a grand entrée to their twin-towered church of

Trinità dei Monti

at the top. At the foot of the steps burbles the beloved

Barcaccia ("Ugly Boat") fountain,

a sinking and leaking marble boat sculpted by a teenage Bernini along with his father, Pietro Bernini.

Piazza di Spagna

has long been the Anglo-American center of Rome; the British Consul used to have his office here, and the brick Anglican church lies just a few blocks down Via del Babuino.

Flanking the steps are British 19th-century bastions of

Babington's Tea Rooms

(genteel and pricey) and, at no. 26, the pink house where Romantic poet John Keats died of tuberculosis in 1821 at the age of 25. This

Keats-Shelley Memorial House

is now a small museum to the phenomenon of 19th-century literary greats who liked to bum around Italy—Byron, Shelley, the Brownings, Henry James, Edith Whatron, Goethe, James Joyce, and particularly "Giovanni Keats," including some of his letters and a sketch of him on his deathbed by roomie Joseph Severn (tel. 06-678-4235; www.keats-shelley-house.org; adm). As an interesting side not, you can rent a small apartment in this building for anywhere form three nights to six months.

Requiem for AMEX
Until the spread of ATMs in the 1990s, visiting an American Express office every week, or even every few days, was a ritual engaged in by all ex-pats and American travelers in Europe. You needed to exchange traveler's checks for local currency, they operated the best travel agency (and not matter what country you were in, they spoke English), and you could pick up poste restante mail—I received my absentee vote in the 1996 elections thanks to the Amex office in Florence.

The less obvious, American connection to the Spanish Steps starts with the location of Rome's main

American Express office,

a few doors south of the steps on the piazza (see sidebar). Iin 1985, crowds thronged the piazza to protest the opening of

Italy's first McDonald's

here (as a teenage ex-pat, I showed up excited to get my first burger fix in more than a year; it was awful).

This neighborhood also sports most of the

English language bookstores

in Rome, including the venerable Lion Bookshop, at Via dei Greci 33–36 (tel. 06-3265-4007), and Anglo-American, at Via delle Vite 102 (tel. 06-679-5222). (Sadly, the English bookshop two doors up from the Steps where I voraciously bought paperbacks when I was an adolescent and teen—and, since the bulk of the books were printed in England, is why I still have an annoying tendancy to spell things British-style—has long-since closed.)

Leading out from the bottom of the steps is the überfashionable

Via dei Condotti,

the centerpiece for Rome's toniest fashion

boutique shopping

scene which fills the streets radiating from Piazza di Spagna (generally speaking, art and antiques on the streets to the north of Piazza di Spagna, clothing, leather, and jewelry—Gucci, Valentino, Benetton, Ferragamo, Bulgari, Buccellati—along streets to the west and south).

Piazza di Spagna