Rome/Spagna

The Spagna district of Rome lies in the northern part of the central city, to the west of the Park of the Villa Borghese, and is so-called after the famous Spanish Steps. It is one of the most fashionable and well-heeled districts of the Italian capital.

See

Landmarks

• the Spanish Steps (Scalinata di Spagna) and the Piazza di Spagna - a truly monumental stairway of 135 steps, built with French funds between 1721?1725 in order to link the Bourbon Spanish embassy to the Holy See (still located in the piazza below), with the Bourbon French church (its monastery founded in 1495) above.
• Piazza del Popolo
• the Mausoleum of Augustus (Mausoleo di Augusto)

Museums and Galleries

• Keats-Shelley Memorial House=>, Piazza di Spagna 26 - the house in which the famous English poet John Keats succumbed to consumption, now preserved as a memorial to his life and that of his friend Shelley, both of whom are buried in Rome's Protestant Cemetery

Drink

• Babington's Tea Rooms, Piazza di Spagna 23, open 9.30am-8.30pm, closed Tuesdays - situated right next to the base of the Spanish Steps, a veritable tourist trap, so be warned....! Ridiculously over-inflated prices... Cheapest pot of tea, €8!! First opened in 1896 in order to fortify homesick English tourists, once famous as a tranquil English haven in a Latin ocean, now serving tea and scones (and more) with considerably less charm and even less value. Take a look inside if you must, otherwise, avoid like the plague.

This text of this article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0. It has been slightly modified to fit the general design of this website. The authors of this document are and the following WikiTravel users: Pjamescowie, Elgaard. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Rome/Spagna.