Piazza di Spagna took its name from the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, whose extraterritorial grounds could conscript unwary foreigners into Spain's army. Yet the Spanish Steps themselves were French-funded, built between 1723 and 1726 to link the Bourbon embassy below with Trinità dei Monti above, a church whose twin clock faces still show Rome time and Paris time. Francesco de Sanctis designed the 138 travertine steps after decades of diplomatic wrangling over a French plan to crown them with an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. The Pope refused. De Sanctis' compromise satisfied both powers, dividing the cascading staircase into three flights of three sections each, evoking the Holy Trinity.

Below sits the Fontana della Barcaccia, Pietro Bernini's half-sunken boat commemorating Christmas Day 1598, when the Tiber flooded so severely a barge washed all the way to the square. The fountain sits below street level because the Acqua Vergine aqueduct feeding it carries such low pressure that Bernini couldn't build upward.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the square to trace Rome's transformation into a Grand Tour destination, revealing how carriage repair shops lined Via delle Carrozze when horse-drawn vehicles couldn't navigate beyond this point, explaining how the area became the "English ghetto" where Keats spent his final months, and connecting the literary haunts and Renaissance palaces that made the Spanish Steps Europe's widest staircase and a gathering place for artists since the 1500s.