The palace with two staircases

This palace is the only building both men worked on at the same time, and you can see the result in two staircases.

Pope Urban VIII had it built from 1627 onwards for his family. Carlo Maderno started the work, with his nephew Borromini employed as a draughtsman, and when Maderno died in 1629 Bernini took charge. Borromini stayed on, answering to a man his own age whom he saw as a sculptor rather than an architect.

On the left side of the building you find Bernini's broad square staircase, with straight flights and a calm rhythm. On the right sits Borromini's oval spiral staircase, which narrows as it rises so that it seems deeper than it really is, carried by paired columns.

Two takes on the same problem, in the same house. Borromini left soon afterwards, and the partnership was over.

Inside is the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Italy's national gallery of early painting, with the ceiling by Pietro da Cortona and work by Caravaggio and Raphael among other things. That is a museum visit in its own right and needs a ticket, while the facade with its three rows of windows reads just as clearly from the street.

We follow the street further uphill to the crossroads where a fountain sits on every corner.