About This Location
Tucked into a small corner near Piazza Navona, the Statua di Pasquino is easy to miss at first. It is a battered ancient marble group set into a wall on Piazza di Pasquino, right along the route between Via del Governo Vecchio and the streets around Piazza Navona. The statue was found in 1501 and placed here at the request of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. Even then it was already incomplete, and the damage is part of its identity. Different sources link it to decoration from the nearby area of Domitian’s Stadium, and it is often described as a scene from classical myth, commonly identified as Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus. Pasquino became famous for something unusual - it “spoke.” From the early 1500s, Romans began posting anonymous notes on or near it, mocking powerful figures and commenting on politics and scandals. These sharp messages became known as pasquinades, and the tradition turned Pasquino into the best-known of Rome’s “talking statues.” Look at the statue’s rough surface and the busy street around it. The contrast is the point: a broken piece of antiquity became a public noticeboard for the city’s humor and frustration, right in the open where everyone could read it and no single author had to claim it.