Church of Saint Agnes at the Circus Agonalis
Chiesa di Sant'Agnese in Agone
Piazza Navona
Rome Italy
2016

https://www.santagneseinagone.org/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Agnese_in_Agone

Sant'Agnese in Agone is a 17th-century Baroque church in Rome, Italy. It faces onto the Piazza Navona, one of the main urban spaces in the historic centre of the city and the site where the Early Christian Saint Agnes was martyred in the ancient Stadium of Domitian.

The name of this church is unrelated to the ‘agony’ of the martyr: in agone was the ancient name of Piazza Navona (piazza in agone), and meant instead, from the Greek, ‘in the site of the competitions’, because Piazza Navona was built on the site of an ancient Roman stadium of the Greek model, with one flat end, and was used for footraces (Latin agōn, "contest"). From ‘in agone’, the popular use and pronunciation changed the name into ‘Navona’, but other roads in the area kept the original name.

Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers is situated in front of the church. It is often said that Bernini sculpted the figure of the "Nile" covering his eyes as if he thought the façade designed by his rival Borromini could crumble atop him. This story, like many urban legends, persists because it has a ring of authenticity, despite the fact that Bernini's fountain predates the façade by some years.

Borromini and Bernini became rivals, and more, for architectural commissions. Most prominently, during the Pamphili papacy, an official commission was established to study defects that had arisen in the foundations of the belltowers (built under Bernini's guidance) in the façade of Saint Peter's Basilica. In testimony before the commission, Borromini was one of many harsh critics that assailed the project's engineering. Ultimately, in a severe blow to Bernini's prestige as an architect, the façade bell-towers were torn down, and never rebuilt.