022.

Piazza Colonna

Piazza Colonna was the second large open space one encountered moving along the Via del Corso from Piazza del Popolo. The piazza was named after the column dedicated to Marcus Aurelius (1) (161-180 AD) and erected shortly after his death. The column was restored under Sixtus V (1585-90) who had the statue of St Paul placed on its top. The piazza was considerably smaller than it is now before the construction of Palazzo Chigi (2) under Alexander VII (1655-67) when a block of houses was demolished to the north of the column (this block is present in the Tempesta map of 1593, but not on the 1661 update of the same map). As often happens in Rome, the column is not at the center of the piazza, because when it was built in the mid 1600s, the Palazzo Chigi respected the line of the original street absorbed into the piazza by the demolition of the houses. The Della Porta fountain in the foreground, dating from the 1570s is aligned on the east-west axis of the column base. Beyond Palazzo Chigi is the Curia Innocenziana (3), see Plate 23. The 17th century building facing us, which Vasi refers to as the Palazzo del Viceregente (4), was completely refaced in 1838 by Camporese and is now known as Palazzo Wedekind. The unnumbered building in the left foreground is Palazzo Ferraioli (formerly Del Bufalo), bordered by the late Baroque facade of the church of SS. Bartolomeo e Alessandro (5).