The Spanish Steps: What They Are and What to Do With Them

The steps are not Spanish. The Scalinata di Trinita dei Monti were built between 1723 and 1725 with French money – specifically, funding provided by French diplomat Etienne Gueffier – to connect the French-owned Trinita dei Monti church at the top with the Piazza di Spagna below. The piazza takes its name from the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, which has occupied a building on the square since the 17th century. So: French-funded stairs, named after a Spanish building, in a country that is neither. This is fairly typical of how Rome accumulates names.

The 135 travertine steps are worth seeing. They’re also one of the most visited spots in Rome, which means summer afternoons involve crowds, heat, aggressive rose sellers, and the enforcement of a 2019 Rome city council ban on sitting on the steps (fines up to €400; enforcement is erratic but the fines are real). Go before 9am for the steps without the crowd, or around 7-8pm when the afternoon density has thinned and the light hits the Trinita dei Monti facade from the west.

What’s Around the Steps

The Fontana della Barcaccia at the base of the steps is a Pietro Bernini work from 1627 – Gian Lorenzo’s father, not the more famous son. The problem Bernini faced was water pressure: the ancient Acqua Vergine aqueduct feeding the fountain had insufficient pressure for a conventional vertical fountain, so he designed one that barely rises above street level, built into the paving as a half-submerged boat. It’s an elegant engineering solution and a considerably underrated piece of Baroque work that most visitors walk around without stopping for.

The streets west of the piazza – Via Condotti especially – are Rome’s luxury shopping zone. Gucci, Prada, Bulgari, Valentino occupying 18th-century ground-floor shops. The architecture of the street is worth seeing regardless of whether you’re buying anything.

Keats-Shelley House is on the right side of the steps at their base (Piazza di Spagna 26). John Keats died in this apartment in February 1821, aged 25, from tuberculosis. The small museum holds manuscripts, letters, and personal effects of the Romantic poets who gathered in Rome – Keats, Shelley, Byron – and the apartment itself, with views directly onto the steps and the fountain, is moving in a way the larger Roman monuments are not. Entry around €9; rarely crowded.

Trinita dei Monti church at the top is free to enter. The 16th-century interior contains two chapels painted by Daniele da Volterra, Michelangelo’s student. His fresco of the Descent from the Cross (1541) in the second chapel on the left is considered one of the finest Mannerist paintings in Rome. Michelangelo himself ranked it highly. Almost everyone who visits the Steps misses it entirely because they’re done with Rome at the top of the stairs and don’t go inside.

Food and Getting There

The immediate piazza area is expensive. Two minutes’ walk east on Via della Croce you’ll find trattorias at prices that reflect a functioning neighbourhood rather than tourist infrastructure. Antico Caffe Greco on Via Condotti (open since 1760, Goethe and Keats both drank here) charges a premium for table service but is genuinely atmospheric as an experience of 18th-century Roman cafe culture.

Metro A stops at Spagna, directly at the base of the steps. It’s also walkable from the Trevi Fountain (10 minutes east) and from the Pantheon (20 minutes south through the historic centre). The density of Rome’s best sites within walking distance of each other in this area means the steps function well as a starting or ending point for a full day in the centro storico.