The Fountain of the Tureen (Fontana detta la “Terrina”) is located in the rione Parione in the historical center of Rome. Before being placed in its present spot in the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova, it spent a long time in storage.
Fountain of the Tureen Rome
The Piazza della Chiesa Nuova is not the original site of the fountain, since it initially had been constructed for the Campo de’ Fiori. Toward the end of the 19th century, it was moved in order to be replaced by the statue of Giordano Bruno.
The fountain had been commissioned in 1582 by Pope Gregorio XIII Boncompagni and designed and constructed by Giacomo della Porta. At the time it was built below street level, since otherwise the pressure of the Acqua Vergine aqueduct would not have been strong enough to make it function.
The white marble shell the fountain consists of used to be decorated with four bronze dolphins (originally sculpted for the Fountain of the Turtles). These dolphins were later removed and subsequently got lost.
In 1622 Pope Gregory XV had the fountain’s basin closed. The reason was that the daily market in the Campo de’ Fiori caused the water to be permanently dirty because of the rubbish that was thrown into it. It was around this time that the Romans invented the nickname Terrina, or “soup dish” for the fountain.
For a long time the fountain remained stored in one of the municipal storage rooms, but in 1924 it was reconstructed in its present spot in the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova.