The Spanish Steps rise from Piazza di Spagna in an elegant cascade of 138 stone steps that took a diplomatic crisis to build.

Built between 1723 and 1726, these 138 steps took more than a century to get from idea to reality, thanks to a diplomatic row between France and the papal states over who owned the land. The name comes from the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See at the bottom, not Spain itself, which keeps a separate embassy for Italy closer to Augustus's mausoleum.

The steps once served as Rome's most glamorous job centre, where artists' models lounged waiting for work in the 1700s and 1800s. In 1986, McDonald's opened at the piazza's base, sparking locals to protest by handing out free pasta, inadvertently launching the global Slow Food Movement. Today, eating on the steps risks a fine for greasy stains.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the steps' role as a cultural crossroads, from writers like Keats and Byron finding inspiration here to its function linking French and Spanish neighbourhoods.