Fontana delle Rane, Decorative fountain in Piazza Mincio, Rome, Italy.
Fontana delle Rane is a decorative fountain in Piazza Mincio in Rome featuring frog sculptures arranged across multiple levels. Water flows through several basins where the green amphibians serve as the main design elements.
Gino Coppedè drew up the plan in 1915 and built the residential complex around Piazza Mincio between 1921 and 1927, the year he died; the area lay in the Trieste district, then called Savoia. He designed and made the fountain himself in 1924 in a neo-baroque style, as the ornamental centre of the square.
The fountain's name comes from the eight small frogs crouched on the rim of the upper basin, which spout water toward its centre. Its shell-shaped basins and the large bee on the edge of the four-lobed platform are read as a homage to Bernini's fountains, while the whole composition echoes the Fontana delle Tartarughe in Piazza Mattei. A local legend holds that the Beatles bathed in the basin after an evening at the Piper club in 1965.
The fountain stands in the middle of Piazza Mincio, the central nucleus of the Coppedè area inside the Trieste quarter, northeast of Rome's historic centre. Visitors approach it on foot through the surrounding streets of palazzi; the circular basin and its step sit directly on the paved square, so the sculpture groups can be walked around and seen from all sides.
A legend holds that after an evening at the Piper club in 1965, the Beatles bathed in the fountain's basin. The story is unverified but is repeated locally and adds a pop-culture layer to the fountain's Bernini-inspired shells and bee.
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