As you quietly sip a coffee in Piazza Navona, a pinch of zest is added by the thought of being seated in what once would have been the path of professional athletes hurtling naked round Domitian’s Stadium. As well as the shape of the piazza, the link is there in the name. Evoking Greek athletic contests of ancient times, the mediaeval “Piazza d’Agone” with a consonant shift comes down to us as Piazza Navona.
Even closer to the mediaeval name is that of the church of S. Agnese in Agone, designed by Borromini, which is the backdrop to Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers. By another stretch of imagination, you might be underwater. The structure was occasionally flooded for mock naval battles – naumachie – accounting for the present name’s initial syllable, a practice revived in the 18th and 19th centuries, when on August weekends Roman prelates and nobles processed in carriages, their axles peaceably paddling water.
