Piazza Navona - Table of Contents .............. Architecture Around the World
Fountain of the Moor (Fontana del Moro)
Southern end of the Piazza Navona, Rome, Italy
|1576 architect:||Giacomo della Porto|
||Center triton riding a dolphin resembles a "Moor" (African)
||1576 - Four Tritons sculpted by Giacomo della Porta.
1653 - A Moor, or African, or Ethiopian, wrestling with a dolphin sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini was added in 1874 during a restoration of the fountain,
|Current location of original statues:
||During a restoration in 1874, the original sculptures were moved to the Villa Borghese and substitute copies were made and are still on the fountain.|
Piazza Navona is a popular destination for photographers.
Bernini's Moor wrestling a dolphin.
Detail - The Moor
Two of four tritons in the fountain.
Triton was a god of the sea, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, portrayed as having the head and trunk of a man and the tail of a fish ("merman"), and holding a trumpet made from a conch shell which he blew like a trumpet to calm or raise the waves. Tritons were a race of sea gods and goddesses born from Triton.