The route of historic fountains

In the community life of Trento the fountains have been living and important cultural assets for centuries; placed in the most important corners of the city when the water supply did not exist yet, they were not only essential for daily needs, but also were used as meeting places, poles of aggregation and socialization. Architects and sculptors had the task of representing the character of the square or crossroads in which the fountains were placed. Within the city walls of Trento in the second half of the nineteenth century there were no less than thirty-five fountains, most of them designed and built by the civic engineer Paolo Leonardi (whose preparatory drawings are conserved in the Municipal Archive of Trento), between the end of the Eighteenth- and the end of the Nineteenth Century witnessing the period of the Counter-Reformation and the first dawning of the modern city.

Some of these fountains decorate still today evocative corners of the city.

The most popular fountain, which is also one of the city symbols, is Neptune’s fountain. Its collocation, right at the direct closure of the urban triumphal axis which connected the so called “diamonds door” of the Buonconsiglio Castle to the Duomo, confirms the attention of the city towards decorations linked to water elements, as happened in great monumental creations of other Italian cities.

Another symbol of Piazza Duomo is Fontana dell’aquila, decorated with an eagle and still today a meeting point, placed at the corner of Casa Rella. Piazza Pasi and Piazza delle Erbe are adorned with scultures of Andrea Malfatti: respectively fountains of “do’castradi” and the “bacchino”. Close to the ancient Augustinian convent there are the eighteen-century fountain dedicated to San Giovanni Nepomuceno and the nineteenth -century fountains located in the San marco garden. Of particular interest is the anecdote linked to the sculptures by Fozzer inside the Fontana dei cavalli, now decorated with horses and also called “mayor’s washbasin”. The Fontana dei delfini, decorated with dolphins, beautifies the corner of the city close to the church of Santa Croce.