Fountain of Pope Pius IX on Piazza Mastai

A few years before the breach of Porta Pia that put an end to the temporal power of the papacy, in an area of ​​the Trastevere district at the time occupied by gardens and poor houses, the last Pope-King Pius IX Mastai-Ferretti commissioned architect Andrea Busiri Vici a fountain to adorn a large semicircular square, dominated by the imposing Manifattura dei Tabacchi building (Tobacco Manufacturing, now home to the offices of the Monopolies and Customs) and placed in the center of the new “Mastai District” that the architect himself had designed for the Pope.

Elegant and harmonious although not particularly original, it is the first modern monumental fountain built in the district after the Fontanone dell’Acqua Paola on the Janiculum Hill in the early 17th century. For its construction, the architect drew inspiration from the oldest fountain in the nearby square of Santa Maria in Trastevere, drawing on the late 16th-century repertoire of Giacomo Della Porta for the architectural elements and the Baroque style for the decorative ones.

An octagonal travertine pool is placed on an ramp, also octagonal with three high steps, and is decorated with Pius IX’s coat of arms and four plaques with the name of the pontiff and the date of 1865, the year of completion of the work. In the center, four dolphins with intertwined tails support an elegant basin adorned with four small lion heads that pour water into the main pool below. The crowning basin is instead held by four cupids with a mermaid's tail.