Fontana della Barcaccia (Fountain of the Old Boat) in Rome


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FOUNTAIN OF THE OLD BOAT IN ROME

Fontana della Barcaccia "Fountain of the Old Boat" is a fresh-water fountain of Baroque located just below the Spanish Steps in Piazza di Spagna.
The name comes from the shape of a half-sunken ship with water overflowing its bows. The fountain was completed in 1627 by Pietro Bernini and his son Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The shape was chosen because, prior to the river walls being built, the Tiber often flooded and in 1598 there was a particularly bad flood and Piazza di Spagna contained up to a meter of water.
Once the water subsided, a boat was left behind in the square.

In the piazza, on the right, is the house where English poet John Keats lived and died in 1821.
It it is now a museum dedicated to his memory and holds full of memorabilia of the English Romantic generation. It is said that Keats could hear the sound of the fountain's water flowing soothingly from his deathbed. He said it reminded him of lines from the 17th-century play Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding (1611) and was the source for his epitaph: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.