The Minerva & Ghetto Walk

Rome, Italy

50 tickets 4.3 km · about 2 hr 10 mins · 10 stops · Standard walk How Walking Tickets work

ArchitectureArt & CultureReligion & SpiritualityRenaissance

This walk explores Rome’s Baroque transformation, when art, architecture, religion, and politics fused into public spectacle after the Counter-Reformation. It follows the rivalry of Bernini and Borromini, whose fountains, monuments, and buildings shaped the city, alongside Caravaggio’s dramatic revolution in painting. The route also shows how popes reused ancient ruins and symbols to link Baroque Rome to imperial power, with stops including the Contarelli Chapel, Piazza Navona, and the Minerva elephant.

The stops

01
Contarelli Chapel
The Contarelli Chapel or Cappella Contarelli is located within the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. It is famous for housing three paintings on the theme of Saint Matthew the Evangelist by the Baroque master Caravaggio.
02
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi
Bernini's masterpiece of dynamic stone and water, commissioned by Pope Innocent X Pamphilj for Piazza Navona. A direct embodiment of papal patronage and Baroque competition.
03
Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone
Repeated here as a walk-layered viewpoint on the rivalry: its façade and setting help explain how Borromini's vision negotiated with Bernini's more theatrical urban language nearby.
04
Chiesa di Sant'Andrea della Valle / Church of Saint Andrew of the Valley
A major Roman Baroque church, it is known for its immense interior and for housing important works by Domenichino and Giovanni Lanfranco. The church's façade was completed by Carlo Rainaldi after an earlier design by Carlo Maderno.
05
Iscrizione del ponte Cestio
A compact inscription stop that can enrich a walk through Trastevere by pointing to bridge history and urban memory. Best used as a brief contextual marker rather than a standalone highlight.
06
Fontana delle Tartarughe
The Fontana delle Tartarughe is a fountain of the late Italian Renaissance, located in Piazza Mattei, in the Sant'Angelo district of Rome, Italy.
07
Ghetto ebraico (Jewish Ghetto)
A historically important district that broadens the tour beyond papal monumentality to the Jewish experience in Rome. It adds a crucial civic and social layer near the historic center.
08
Santa Maria sopra Minerva
A major Roman church and former temple, it is one of the few surviving large Gothic churches in Rome. It is especially noted for Michelangelo's statue of Christ the Redeemer and for hosting important Dominican and papal funerary monuments.
09
Elefantino della Minerva
One of Bernini's most beloved and witty responses to the problem of reusing an ancient obelisk. It turns a Roman antiquity into a papal emblem and a Baroque joke.
10
Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi / Church of St. Louis of the French
The church is best known for its three Caravaggio masterpieces in the Contarelli Chapel: The Calling of Saint Matthew, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew.