The chapels, palaces and collections of the quarter, from Caravaggio at Santa Maria del Popolo to the bone-decorated Cripta dei Cappuccini.
Last updated August 23, 2026
In a nutshell: the Tridente packs an extraordinary run of churches and museums: Santa Maria del Popolo with its Caravaggios, the tiny baroque masterpieces of Borromini and Bernini, the palaces of the Barberini and Colonna families, the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus, and the macabre Cripta dei Cappuccini. The Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps sit right next door, and the district overview ties the chapter together.
Rome's great families stopped at nothing to broadcast their status, and the Barberini, once they had conquered the papacy, were no different. Small wonder, then, that their grand residence, raised at the peak of the Renaissance era, combines architecture and art of the highest order, with works by Bernini, Caravaggio, Raphael and Borromini.
Tip: Book ahead if you plan to visit on the first Sunday of the month or on national holidays such as 25 April, 2 June and 4 November, when crowds and queues spike.
The palace: Pope Urban VIII commissioned the building and handed the job to the three most prominent architects in Rome: Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who laboured on it between 1625 and 1633. The bitter rivals Borromini and Bernini each contributed a monumental staircase; Borromini's spiralling flight is usually the better known.
The art: the museum counts a number of masterpieces among its rooms. Downstairs, Filippo Lippi's Annunciation (1440-45) greets you; upstairs await Caravaggio's Narcissus (1597-99) and the brutal Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598-1602). Also unmissable: Raphael's La Fornarina, the portrait of a young woman traditionally identified as his mistress, a baker's daughter from Trastevere, and Hans Holbein's celebrated 1540 likeness of Henry VIII of England.
The Salone di Pietro da Cortona: the reception hall deserves a special mention: here you will happily tilt your head back to admire Pietro da Cortona's enormous ceiling fresco, The Triumph of Divine Providence (1632-39), an allegory in praise of Pope Urban VIII and his kin, announced by the three Barberini bees worked into the composition.
Santa Maria del Popolo is the biggest church facing Piazza del Popolo, but not the only one of note: the famous 'twin' pair, Basilica di Santa Maria in Montesanto (chiesadegliartisti.it) and Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli, frame the square and deserve a visit in their own right, despite their smaller size. The nickname oversells the resemblance: they appear alike but are not identical. Pope Alexander VII's architects in the 17th century had different amounts of space to work with, which explains the differences. Santa Maria in Montesanto, on the left with your back to the Flaminio obelisk, has an elliptical dome and six side chapels; Santa Maria dei Miracoli answers with a circular dome and four chapels. The artistic haul is slimmer than at Santa Maria del Popolo, yet both churches are fine examples of the baroque style then sweeping Rome.
The Artists' Mass: Santa Maria in Montesanto is also nicknamed 'the Artists' Church', thanks to a weekly Mass aimed at people working in culture and entertainment. The tradition began in the early 1940s and found its permanent home here in the 1950s. Because of that bond, the basilica is often chosen for the funerals of figures who shaped Italy's cultural history, from actors and writers to TV personalities.
Down by the Tiber, the modern glass shell can mislead: the pavilion was rebuilt in the 2000s to meet security and environmental requirements, but what it protects has stood since the 1st century CE. The Senate raised the Ara Pacis, the 'altar of peace', to celebrate the peace Augustus brought to Rome. Walk around it and study the intricate friezes, which show how closely Roman religion was tied to civic duty. If the timing is right, a temporary exhibition may also be on in the museum's lower level.
Official site →Just across Via Ripetta stands the imposing tomb Augustus built for himself and several members of his dynasty (mausoleodiaugusto.it/en). Because of long renovation works the mausoleum is closed more often than open, but even a glimpse from outside conveys the grandeur of his Rome.
Official site →The first Roman emperor: Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE) was the first emperor of Rome. The adoptive son of Julius Caesar, he entered public life by hunting down Caesar's killers and defeating his former ally Mark Antony along with Antony's ally, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. A shrewd politician, he squared his absolute power with the pretence that the old Republican institutions were still going concerns. He reformed the Roman state from head to toe and famously gave the city a long stretch of peace after terrible years of civil war: the pax romana that the Ara Pacis commemorates.
It may be hard to believe, but Villa Medici (villamedici.it/en) stands as high as St Peter's Basilica, the traditional height ceiling for Roman buildings even though no law sets it. Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici ordered the palace in the 16th century, and it began life as the headquarters of the Tuscan ambassadors to the papal court, one of the most glittering parlours in the city. When the Medici line came to an end, the villa fell into disuse and most of its artworks went back to Florence. Napoleon then bought the place and turned it into the Roman outpost of the French Academy, which supports young French-speaking artists. Visiting takes planning: guests are admitted on guided tours only, run regularly in French, Italian and English, and reservations must be made in advance. The palace, and above all its beautiful gardens, is a lovely niche choice if you want a break from the busiest sights.
Official site →Less of a people-watching theatre than Piazza del Popolo, this square still earns a few minutes of your time. It sits where Via del Tritone, Via delle Quattro Fontane, Via Veneto and Via Barberini converge, so you will almost certainly cross it, possibly more than once, while touring the Tridente. When you do, give the two Bernini fountains that decorate it their due.
The better known of the pair stands near the middle of the square: a triton blowing a conch shell, supported by four dolphins. Urban VIII paid for it and, since he also reshaped this whole quarter in the 17th century, the three Barberini bees appear on the heraldic shield at its foot.
Sitting on the corner of Via Veneto, this shell-shaped fountain carries three bees, the emblem of the Barberini family headed by Pope Urban VIII, its patron.
The Medici: though their power was rooted in Florence, the Medici stretched their influence over the Tuscan border into the Papal State, and so into Rome. The family fortune began with the banker Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, and by the Renaissance they ranked among the pope's official bankers. That clout, added to a clever marriage policy, put two Medici on the papal throne: Leo X, born Giovanni de' Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Roman noblewoman Clarice Orsini, and Clement VII, born Giulio de' Medici, a nephew of Lorenzo.
If there is one thing you can count on in Rome, it is churches. Plenty of them, in fact. Visiting them all would take considerable time and patience, but some deserve a stop, and a strategically placed church can offer a welcome respite from walking.
Basilica di San Lorenzo in Lucina (sanlorenzoinlucina.com), just off Via del Corso, stands on the remains of what was probably a Roman house belonging to a woman named Lucina, to whom the church seems to be dedicated. Its most interesting features are underground: several digs have revealed the remains of that domus, which may well have hosted the first secret Christian gatherings.
Basilica dei Santi Apostoli (santiapostoli.it) has changed appearance time and again since its original foundation in the early centuries of Christianity. Today it boasts a magnificent portico, sprawling ceiling frescoes by Baciccio and the monumental tomb of Pope Clement XIV carved by Antonio Canova.
Chiesa di Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio overlooks the Trevi Fountain and is relatively small, yet it packs a punch when it comes to odd Roman history. Considered the 'pope's parish' while the popes resided on the nearby Quirinale Hill, the church safeguards 22 so-called precordia, the internal organs extracted from popes during their embalming. They are not visible to the public, but they make for a peculiar piece of knowledge.
Chiesa di San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane is known to Romans by the affectionate diminutive 'San Carlino', because its entire area equals that of a single pillar supporting the dome of St Peter's Basilica. It stands at the intersection of the Quattro Fontane, four fountains representing Fidelity, Strength and the rivers Arno and Tiber. It was the first church ever designed by Borromini, who made the tiny space look bright and airy with a clever play of convex and concave surfaces and hidden windows illuminating the dome.
Chiesa di Sant'Andrea al Quirinale (santandrea.gesuiti.it), not far away, was designed by Borromini's lifelong rival Bernini. The church's oval layout is another device for stretching a compact space, and a sign that Kepler's discoveries on planetary motion were spreading across Europe.
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Vittoria, about 10 minutes on foot, was designed by architect Carlo Maderno. The church owes its name to the 1620 Battle of the White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War, which saw the victory of the Catholic alliance over its Protestant enemies.
Bernini vs Borromini: being a working artist in 17th-century papal Rome could be deeply rewarding, provided you were in the graces of the current pope. That is what fed the rivalry between Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, one of the most famous in the history of Italian art, whose traces are all over Rome. The two were wildly different: worldly Bernini, hailing from relatively nearby Naples, and reserved Borromini, who had reached Rome on foot from Switzerland. They worked under several popes who favoured now one, now the other, producing some of the most renowned works of the entire baroque era.
Built in the 14th century and renovated through the years, as expected for the palace of one of Rome's most powerful families, the Colonnas. Now an art gallery, it features works such as Annibale Carracci's The Beaneater (1580-90) and Bronzino's Venus, Cupid and Satyr (1527-28), alongside the history of the family and its most notorious members, like Marcantonio II, a hero of the 1571 naval Battle of Lepanto fought by the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire. The palace's distinctive feature is its Great Hall: gilded, dazzling and richly decorated, it was used in the 1950s as the set for William Wyler's movie Roman Holiday. And do not forget to look down at the marble steps as you climb to the gallery: a cannonball is lodged in them, shot by the French armies of Louis Napoleon in 1849 during the siege of Rome and its newborn Roman Republic.
Tip: Guests are free to roam the gallery and the gardens, or choose to explore the apartments of Princess Isabelle Colonna, born Isabelle Sursock in Beirut, for a surplus on the entry ticket.
Official site →One of the best places to understand what the Renaissance was: a treasure trove of art commissioned by the city's greatest noble families, where Caravaggio and Pinturicchio share space with Bernini, Bramante and many more major artists of the time. The church's latest round of renovations was set to wrap up in November 2024, letting visitors in once more.
Tip: Bring a stash of coins: lighting most of the church's major works of art, for a set amount of time, works with the coin-operated illumination.
Cerasi Chapel: you will have no trouble spotting it on the left of the main altar, because there is no escaping the magnetic pull and heartbreaking humanity of any work by Caravaggio. Together with his 1600-01Crucifixion of St Peter and Conversion of St Paul on the Road to Damascus, The Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Annibale Carracci completes the chapel's decoration.
Chigi Chapel: Agostino Chigi, a banker for the pope with plenty of money to spend, commissioned this chapel, the second one in from the entrance along the left wall of the church, from his longtime collaborator Raphael, who designed it but passed away before completing the project. The chapel as it looks today was finished around a century later by Bernini.
Della Rovere Chapel: on the right-hand side of the church, a triumph of colour thanks to the frescoes of stories from the lives of saints and of the Virgin Mary, painted by Pinturicchio and his students. Do not forget to look down at the floor tiles, with their images of trees, animals and sigils.
Ancient Roman ruins are around every corner of Rome, but it can be hard to visualise how those pieces of columns and houses looked in their own time. That is where technology comes to the rescue. The multimedia experience at Palazzo Valentini, now the headquarters of the local government of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital and of Rome's prefecture, sits on an archaeological excavation site that has unearthed a series of ancient Roman houses, or domus. The excavated fragments have been revived in a projection tour of how the homes appeared when in use, frescoes and all, with glimpses of daily life inside them. Tours alternate between Italian, English, French, German and Spanish, so book ahead and pick the one that works best for you.
Official site →Ossuaries & macabre art: the Cripta dei Cappuccini is not the only place in Italy where bones are used as decoration, even if the subject is a bit delicate and the Catholic Church insists on its nature not being macabre. In Milan, the Chiesa di San Bernardino alle Ossa has a chapel where skulls are stacked on top of each other up to the vault, frescoed with angels and saints. On the other side of the country, the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo are a vast underground burial ground where the skeletal dead are laid out in full dress, each outfitted by the rank they held in life.
It is best to book ahead for the first Sunday of the month and for national holidays such as 25 April, 2 June and 4 November. The ticket (€15 adult, €2 for EU citizens aged 18-25) also admits you to the Galleria Corsini within 20 days of purchase.
No: the palace is open to visitors on Saturday mornings. Guided tours are available in Italian, English, French and Spanish, and you can add the apartments of Princess Isabelle Colonna for a surplus on the €15 ticket.