No one can walk the Roman streets without perceiving, and almost at once, that here time is of no importance. It is, in fact, an absolutely negligible quantity. Buildings and monuments dating from widely diverse periods stand side by side, and it is in no wise incongruous from the Roman standpoint to find at the head of the Borgo (the ancient Leonine city) one of the very latest fountains of papal Rome. It is a charming little creation, quite consciously harking back to the great days of the papacy and rebuking by its sober, yet imaginative sculpture those geometrical designs or extravagant ebullitions of fancy — the fountains of the present regime. It stands in the Piazza Pia, against that narrow façade which blunts the point of the long angle or wedge-shaped block of buildings lying between the Borgo Vecchio and the Borgo Nuovo. Its Fontanesque mostra is composed of two beautiful white Carrara columns with Corinthian capitals supporting a pediment and entablature on which is an inscription to the effect that the fountain was erected by Pius IX in the sixteenth year of his pontificate, which would make it the year 1862. The sculptural part of the fountain bears a certain resemblance to the work of Luigi Amici and Bitta Zappalà, the artists who not many years later executed the modern figures in the side fountains of the Piazza Navona.
The Piazza Pia fountain might also be ascribed to Tenerani, a distinguished sculptor of Pius IX's pontificate, who, in his devotion to the Pope, did not disdain to design some of the triumphal devices with which Rome welcomed back Pio Nono after Gaeta. But Tenerani's bust is among the "Silent Company of the Pincio," and if the little fountain were indeed his work, the fact would be known. As it is, the sculptor's name seems, for the present, at least, to have been forgotten in the confusion attendant upon the transformation of papal into Italian Rome.
The fountain originally held Paola water, and the charming little vase and dolphins composed of white Carrara have become through the deposits of this water so black that the beauty of the fountain is distinctly marred. This fountain takes the place of an earlier one executed by Carlo Maderno and called the Mask of the Borgo. The design was a large mask from which water flowed into a pilgrim shell over which perched the Borghese eagle, while two lions' heads on either side spouted additional streams. As this first fountain was in travertine it had in all probability succumbed to the disastrous effects of the Paola water, which seems to disintegrate as well as to discolor some varieties of that stone.
There is in the Piazza Mastai another fountain erected by Pius IX. And he also instituted several washing troughs in the Trastevere among the poor, for whom he had always a sincere and profound sympathy. Those who would render justice to this last "Papa Re" should drive up the magnificent approach to the Quirinal Palace. This modern driveway and masonry were erected, as can be seen from the tablet on the sustaining wall of the terrace, for Pius IX by his great architect and engineer Virginio Vespignani. They give the finishing touch of magnificence to the Piazza of the Quirinal, originally laid out on its present grade and in its fine proportions by Domenico Fontana for Sixtus V (some two hundred and eighty years earlier). This approach to the Quirinal and the great buttress walls of the Coliseum might easily be enough to prove Pius IX's care for the city; but, as with those of his predecessors who had the welfare of their people most at heart, his chief claim upon the memory of the Romans lies in the interest which he took in the city's water supply. Pius IX gave his permission to an English company to introduce into Rome the rediscovered springs of the Marcian water. These springs had been first brought to Rome by the Marcian aqueduct in the years 144 - 140 B. C. This aqueduct was the first of the true high-level aqueducts, and covered its path of fifty-eight miles on great arches which brought it to Rome at the Porta Maggiore one hundred and ninety-five feet above sea-level. The two aqueducts which antedated it — the Appian and the Anio Vetus — ran most of the distance underground, the Anio Vetus appearing above ground for only eleven hundred feet, while the Appian (the first of all the Roman aqueducts) was carried overground on low arches for three hundred feet, and actually entered the city fifty feet below the surface of the earth. The springs of the Marcia are now called the Second and Third Serena and are situated in the Valley of the Anio above Tivoli, on the north side of the stream, near Agosta. The original Marcian aqueduct had been destroyed by Fontana when he was collecting material to build the Acquedotto Felice. A portion, however, of the ancient masonry remains, and although to-day the Marcian water comes to Rome chiefly through modern iron pipes, some parts of its passage lead through the old stone channels. The water now enters Rome through the Porta Pia at an altitude of two hundred feet; thus it ranks next to the Paola, which is two hundred and three feet above the sea-level. The Marcia ranks next to the Virgo in abundance, and at present supplies most of the dwelling houses in Rome, Its history is embodied in its full name, Acqua Marcia Pia.
Pius IX made his last public appearance as sovereign pontiff when this water was introduced into Rome. This occurred on September 18, 1870, just two days before the famous "Venti Settembre," when the Italian troops entered Rome through a breach in the Porta Pia. The fountain which was destined to be the last fountain of papal Rome stood in the Piazza delle Terme, not where the present one stands, but off to one side, for the city was still papal Rome and the great Villa Negroni (formerly Montalto) of Pope Sixtus V then covered the site now occupied by the present railway station. Within the gardens of that villa many of the original Acqua Felice fountains were still flowing, and one latter-day inhabitant of the villa tells how, as a child, she often looked down at night from her nursery windows upon an old fountain about which stood a circle of little Campagna foxes drinking from its cypress-guarded waters. The Pope drove to the inauguration of his Marcia Pia amid a vast concourse of people who strewed flowers and shouted: "King, King!" There were, however, few distinguished people at the ceremony. He drank a cup of the water, praised its purity and freshness and thanked the magistrates for giving it his name. It was the last public act of his sovereign pontificate, and derives both significance and dignity from that long list of popes who, since the time of Hadrian I had constituted themselves guardians and builders of Roman aqueducts.
The fountain which Pius IX thus inaugurated has been swept away to make room for the present bronze affair. But the Acqua Marcia Pia now flows in the Pope's pretty fountain of Piazza Pia, so that here in the Borgo, the ancient "Porch of St. Peter's," we find the last water and, with the exception of the fountain in the Piazza Mastai, the last fountain, of papal Rome.