Bathtub

Description

In the late 1840s the large gray granite basin carved from a single block and possibly from the Baths of Alexandria in the Campus Martius was placed in front of the obelisk: 7.18 meters long, it is the largest basin that has come down to us from the ancient world. It was arranged by Pasquale Poccianti, who raised the obelisk 2.50 meters from the ground, and placed under the basin a stepped oval base with avant-corps (now dismantled), with two symmetrical bronze figures, now in the Bargello. From the plinth sprayed a fountain that poured water into the pool below: thus lined the main axis of the garden, the one for those looking from the palace, a dazzling perspective of fountains. The complex was certainly eclectic, but in its own way coherent and delicately polychrome (white, pink, gray, and bronze), was scaled down in the present arrangement that dates perhaps to the early twentieth century.