Italian Writer's Guide to Unknown Rome

If you look for a place where to find the true essence of Rome
walk this astounding square, surrounded by buildings resembling an eighteenth-century theater's stage:
real life and artistic creation are closely intertwined in the same spot for your delight

Sometimes life seems to take on the hue of a theatrical fiction. Piazza St. Ignazio is the most remarkable example of such charming combination in downtown Rome. When architect Filippo Raguzzini devised the square in the eighteenth century, he wanted it to be the summit of the rococo style: a late-baroque reverie of elegance, curved surfaces and perfectly drawn asymmetrical volumes, designed for the visitor's astonishment and entertainement. In a sense, it had to be just like theater.
And theater it is, with the refined building parading in front of you as if you were in the middle of a stage: it comes as quite a surprise to the visitors to raise their eyes and find the blue sky rather than a theater's ceiling, so powerful is the impression given by the Raguzzini's clever and superlative design.