La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) is in Piazza Navona. It was designed in 1651 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Papa Innocenzo X whose family palace, the Palazzo Pamphili, faced onto the piazza as did the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone of which Papa Innocenzo was the sponsor.

The base of the fountain is a basin from the centre of which travertine rocks rise to support four river gods and above them, an ancient Egyptian obelisk surmounted with the Pamphili family emblem of a dove with an olive twig. They represent four rivers of the four continents through which papal authority had spread: the Nile forAfrica, the Danube for Europe, the Ganges for Asia, and the Río de la Plata for the America.