Instead of the Trevi Fountain: Rome's secret squares and courtyards
Tired of the crush at the Trevi Fountain? Here are the secret squares, courtyards and loggias of Rome and Lazio where you can enjoy the Baroque in peace.
In front of the Trevi Fountain today, you queue to take a photo and toss your coin shoulder to shoulder with several hundred other people. Nicola Salvi's masterpiece deserves the visit, but the very Baroque Rome that produced it repeats itself, more quietly, in dozens of tucked-away squares and courtyards hidden behind a doorway. If you're after an alternative to the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the district around it is full of them: just walk five minutes further on and lower the volume.
Baroque squares and courtyards
Start at Piazza Mattei, in the heart of the old Ghetto. Here the Fontana delle Tartarughe, designed by Giacomo della Porta and cast by Taddeo Landini in the late sixteenth century, is one of the most gracious things in the whole city: four bronze youths pushing as many little turtles towards the upper basin (the creatures were added in the seventeenth-century restoration, attributed to Bernini; the current ones are copies). The square is tiny and almost always peaceful. From there, a few steps take you to two Baroque treasures few people seek out: the Sapienza courtyard, where the spiral of Borromini's lantern at Sant'Ivo climbs skyward above Della Porta's sixteenth-century loggia, and above all Palazzo Spada, where Borromini's perspective trick "stretches" an eight-metre gallery until it seems forty: a coup de théâtre worth more than a thousand selfies at Trevi.
Carry on towards Piazza Navona, but don't stop in the square: slip into the alley beside it, where Santa Maria della Pace guards Bramante's cloister and Pietro da Cortona's curved façade, a silent corner that feels like a little theatre of stone. A few minutes away, near Campo de' Fiori, there's a passage almost no tourist notices: the Passetto del Biscione, the dark portico with the fresco of the Madonna held to be miraculous, recently restored and once again open to visitors. It's exactly the kind of place the Trevi crowds ignore: free, intimate, laden with history.
For those who love Rome from above and off to one side, climb to the Fora. Overlooking the Forum of Augustus is the Casa dei Cavalieri di Rodi, whose medieval loggia frames the ruins like a painting: it can be visited only on certain days, but the view from the loggia is one of the finest and least known in the centre. And if you want a whole square off the beaten track, take the metro north: the Coppedè Quarter, with Piazza Mincio and the Fontana delle Rane, is a fairytale frenzy of turrets, arches and grotesque masks built in the 1920s, where you'll see very few tourists. Add, if you have time, the famous "keyhole" of the Priory of Malta on the Aventine, through which you frame the dome of St Peter's: there's a small queue, but nothing like the centre.
Beyond Rome, in Lazio
If you really want to breathe, though, leave Rome and stay in Lazio. Just an hour by car and the overtourism vanishes. To the south, Anagni holds a frescoed crypt so vast and complete it's called the "Sistine Chapel of the Middle Ages", and you almost always visit it in peace. To the north, in the Tuscia, the cathedral of Tuscania keeps in Santa Maria Maggiore a frescoed Last Judgment that leaves you speechless, among stone lions and Romanesque portals. A short distance away, among the woods, the rock-cut necropolis of Norchia lines up cube-shaped Etruscan tombs carved into the tuff, a monumental site where you often meet no one. And for a whole village-square without the crush, there's Celleno Vecchia, the tuff town abandoned after the landslides and now reopened as an open-air museum, with the Orsini Castle overlooking the badlands.
The anti-crowd logic
The logic is simple: there is only one Trevi Fountain and everyone wants it at the same moment. But the same artistic hands - Della Porta, Bernini, Borromini, the sculptors of the Roman Baroque - left dozens of fountains, courtyards and loggias scattered across squares where you still feel you're in Rome, not in a queue. Plan your walk district by district, set out early, and save the Lazio stops for when you want a whole day away from the throng. You'll discover that the most beautiful Rome is often the one that isn't on the postcard.
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Practical info
When is the best time to visit Instead of the Trevi Fountain?
The recommended time is April, May, June, September and October, when it is less crowded.
Where is Instead of the Trevi Fountain?
Instead of the Trevi Fountain is located in Italy.
