Fontana delle Tartarughe

This graceful late Renaissance fountain in the small Piazza Mattei is beloved for the four bronze youths who lean out to push tortoises up into the upper basin. The tortoises were added later, possibly by Bernini during a seventeenth-century restoration, and give the fountain its popular name. Designed in the 1580s and cast by Taddeo Landini, the composition balances the figures with elegant restraint. Set within the old Jewish quarter, it is among the most charming and least crowded fountains in the centre.