Two marble
giants “Castor and Pollux keeping two horses at bay” (or maybe, according to
some scholars, two statues both representing Alexander the Great) from the nearby Baths of Constantine
(306/337), Roman copies of Greek originals of the fifth century BC
The Quirinal Hill took the popular name of
Monte Cavallo from these gigantic statues
In 1589
Sixtus V Peretti (1585/90) had them restored and moved to the center of the
square
In 1786
Pius VI Braschi (1775/99) had them rotated by Giovanni
Antinori (1734/92) who also erected the Obelisk of the Mausoleum
of Augustus which, with its twin now behind S. Maria Maggiore,
used to stand at the entrance of the Mausoleum where it was found in 1527
It is 14.63
m (48 feet) high and, with the base, 28.94 m (95 feet)
The
material is the red granite of Aswan and, considering the lack of inscriptions,
it is believed to have been carved in the same first century AD when it was
brought to Rome
In 1818
Pius VII Chiaramonti (1800/23) had Raffaele Stern
(1774/1820) to design a new fountain with a basin taken from the Roman Forum
known at the time as Campo Vaccino, field of the cows
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