This rare triangular fountain is located inside the largest gladiatorial school in Rome, Ludus Magnus, where gladiators-in-training would practice, eat, and live while they awaited battles in the nearby Colosseum. This is the last remaining fountain of an original four, a precious sculptural witness to the school’s ancient layout. While in the Celio area, dip into one of Rome’s best vintage shops, the Vecchia America, for wares that are (almost) as ancient and unique as the fountain itself.

Like most of the Italian Renaissance fonts, the Turtle Fountain was created to supply water to the city. Unlike the others, though, this gem was designed by a trio of Italian legends: Giacomo della Porta (mastermind of the fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and La Fontana del Moro in the Piazza Navona), Taddeo Landini (whose famous copy of Michelangelo’s Risen Christ resides in Florence’s Santo Spirito church) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who made the bronze turtles around the upper basin.

While tourists flock to Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, another of his luminous works lies off the beaten path. Sculpted in 1644 and located in Piazza Barberini, the Fountain of the Bees is a marble masterpiece depicting a bi-valve shell with three bees carved into it. Commissioned by Pope Urban VIII Barberini, the fountain is a tribute to his family heraldic symbols and an ode to apian industry, as the flow of water trills like the humming of bees.

Known locally as Pigna, this monumental pine-cone-shaped fountain was cast out of bronze in the first or second century AD and originally stood near the Pantheon, where it spouted water from holes pierced through its scales. In its current home outside the doors of old St. Peter’s, the pine cone is flanked by two graceful bronze peacocks. Pigna was immortalized in verse by Dante in the Divine Comedy to describe the head of the giant Nimrod, builder of the tower of Babel.

Designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1651, this fountain depicts four river gods from the four continents where the Pope had authority: the Nile for Africa, the Danube for Europe, the Ganges for Asia, and the Río de la Plata for the Americas. The Río de la Plata is depicted covering his face from what seems like a snake, though some art historians believe he may have been shielding himself from the nearby church of Sant'Agnese, designed by Bernini’s artistic rival Francesco Borromini.

Il Babuino is one of the six “talking statues” of Rome, used as a form of political discourse: residents posted poems or witticisms on top of them as a way to express dissent. (Consider it the Twitter of 1581.) Years down the road, residents still used it for political commentary, but with graffiti as the tool of choice before the mayor had to intervene. The fountain depicts a homely Silenus (a mythological half-man, half-goat), and his features won him the nickname of “babuino,” or baboon.

The Fontana dell'Acqua Paola (a.k.a. Il Fontanone, “the big fountain”) is a behemoth commissioned by Pope Paul V to create a source of clean water for the residents of the Janiculum Hill, in lieu of drinking from the polluted Tiber. Built in 1612 by a Dominican friar and late-Mannerist architect Giovanni Fontana, the fountain is in itself a must-see. However, the Janiculum Hill view of the entire city is stunning. End your day here at sunset, refracted by the pastel hues of Italy’s eternal city.