Fontana del Nettuno (Neptune Fountain)

What you are looking at

The fountain sits on Piazza del Nettuno, the smaller square wedged onto the northwest corner of Piazza Maggiore, with Palazzo d’Accursio on one side and Biblioteca Salaborsa on the other. You will walk past it on the way in from the station without meaning to.

Cardinal Pier Donato Cesi, the papal legate governing Bologna, commissioned it in 1563 as a piece of public flattery aimed at Pope Pius IV. Tommaso Laureti handled the architecture and the water engineering. The bronze went to Giambologna, a Flemish sculptor working in Italy, who cast Neptune and the figures around the basin. The work was finished around 1566.

Neptune himself is 3.4 meters of bronze, one arm out, trident down, weight on one leg. Bolognesi call him il Gigante, the Giant.

The politics behind it are worth a second. Bologna was governed from Rome at the time, and a papal legate putting a monumental fountain in the city’s main civic space was making a point about who was in charge. The city got a working water supply out of it and a symbol it has used ever since, which is roughly how these arrangements tend to end up.

The base, and what is not on it

Around the basin are four sirens pressing water from their breasts, and putti holding dolphins. That is the actual cast of characters. If you read somewhere that the fountain has turtles on it, we could not confirm that in any source, Italian or English, and we would leave it out.

The thumb

This is the thing people come for, and almost nobody finds it by accident.

Stand on the dark paving stone set into the ground in front of Biblioteca Salaborsa and look up at Neptune. From that one spot, and only that spot, his outstretched left thumb lines up with his lower abdomen and reads as something anatomical. Locals call the stone the pietra della vergogna, the stone of shame. The trick is attributed to Giambologna, who apparently knew exactly what he was doing.

Look for the stone rather than a plaque. It is darker than the pavement around it and there is usually somebody already standing on it with a phone.

Where to stand

This is an awkward corner for photographs. Palazzo d’Accursio rises behind the fountain on one side and the flat front of Salaborsa closes it on the other, and most people end up shooting into whatever light there is.

Two positions work. From the Piazza Maggiore side you get Neptune with the bulk of the basilica behind him, which is the shot that reads as Bologna. From the far side of Piazza del Nettuno, closer to Via Ugo Bassi, you get him against the tower of Palazzo d’Accursio, which is better in the evening once the floodlights come on.

The one thing to avoid is the middle of a July afternoon, when the sun is directly overhead, the bronze goes flat and the square is at its most crowded.

The exam lap

Students at the University of Bologna hold that walking twice counter-clockwise around the fountain brings luck in exams. The reason given is that Giambologna paced the same circuit while planning the sculpture. There is no way to check this and we are not going to pretend otherwise, but in May and June you will see people doing it.

The 2017 restoration

The fountain went behind scaffolding in 2016 for a full clean and an anti-corrosion conservation project, and came back in December 2017, unveiled just before Christmas. If your mental image of the Neptune is a dark, streaked green figure, that image is from before the work. The bronze reads much lighter now, and the water was reconnected properly at the same time.

Tips

• Come at dusk. The fountain is lit after dark and the bronze against the lit facade of Palazzo d’Accursio is the best photograph on the square.
• Or come before nine in the morning, when the piazza is nearly empty and you can shoot the fountain with the basilica behind it and no one in the frame.
• The thumb photo needs a low angle. Crouch on the stone rather than standing on it.
• Look at the wall behind you while you are there. The facade of Salaborsa carries the Sacrario dei Caduti, a memorial of more than 2,000 photographs of Bolognese partisans killed between 1943 and 1945. Most visitors walk straight past it.
• Ten minutes is enough for the fountain itself, which makes it a good first or last stop rather than a destination. Pair it with something indoors on a hot afternoon or in the rain.