Fontana delle Tartarughe

The Fontana delle Tartarughe (The Turtle Fountain) is a fountain of the late Italian Renaissance, located in Piazza Mattei, in the Sant'Angelo district of Rome, Italy. It was built between 1580 and 1588 by the architect Giacomo della Porta and the sculptor Taddeo Landini. The bronze turtles around the upper basin, usually attributed either to Gian Lorenzo Bernini or Andrea Sacchi, were added in either 1658 or 1659 when the fountain was restored.

The Fontana delle Tatarughe, like all Renaissance fountains, was designed to supply drinking water to the Roman population. It was one of a group of eighteen new fountains built in Rome in the sixteenth century following the restoration of a ruined first century Roman acqueduct, the Acqua Vergine, by Pope Gregory XIII.

The Acqua Vergine had been one of the first Roman aqueducts, opened by Marcus Agrippa, a chief aide of emperor Augustus, in 19 b.c.. It carried water from the village of Salone in the Alban Hills, nine miles north of Rome, and ended in a fountain near the Pantheon. It was known for the purity of its water. The aqueduct was destroyed by the Visigoths in the 6th century, then partially restored by Pope Adrian I (772-795) in the 8th century. Through the Middle Ages it was the only acqueduct supplying drinking water to Roman fountains; the rest of the city's drinking water came from the Tiber River.

In 1561, Pope Pius IV decided to completely reconstruct the acqueduct. The project was given to the Papal architect, Giacomo della Porta (1532–1602), who built some of Rome's most famous fountains, and also completed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica following Michelangelo's and rebuilt the facades of some of Rome's major churches. The reconstruction of the acqueduct was finished in August 1570, with the first water flowing to a reservoir near the present Trevi Fountain.

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