Piazza Navona's grand centrepiece, Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi is an ornate, showy work featuring muscular personifications of the Nile, Ganges, Danube and River Plate.
Legend has it that the figure of the Nile is shielding his eyes from the Chiesa di Sant'Agnese in Agone, designed by Bernini's bitter rival, Borromini. The truth, more boringly, is that Bernini completed his fountain two years before his contemporary started work on the facade, and the gesture indicates that the source of the Nile was unknown at the time.
