L'altra Roma: Una Storia dei Romani all'epoca dei communi (secoli XII-XIV). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. By the end of this project, the church of Saint Agnes in Agony towered over all other buildings in the square, which remains to be the case today. Though the structure of the church certainly changed, the original plan of the basilica was retained to an extent. In the early twelfth century, Pope Callistus II had the oratory greatly enlarged. Similar to the other buildings of the piazza, the oratory was embedded in the original structure of the Stadium of Diocletian. The church was originally built as a humble oratory to the Christian martyr Saint Agnes sometime before 800. Presently the impressive Baroque façade of the Church of Saint Agnes in Agony looms over the Piazza Navona. The first two games mentioned were featured in the Piazza Navona. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Rome put on games in a celebration of the community which featured three games in particular: the hasti ludium in which horsemen would demonstrate their proficiency with a lance by threading them through suspended rings, the horse races, and the bull-and-pig-chasing. It was not uncommon for the piazza to host races and tournaments during the late medieval era. Though most of the original stadium has since been engulfed by newer buildings, you can still see pieces of the original framework in which these medieval houses would have been situate in the museum of the Stadium of Diocletian, at the northern end of the Piazza Navona. Instead of the Renaissance and Baroque era buildings that face the piazza today, dwellings of the medieval piazza would have been ensconced within the original vaults of the Stadium. However, the original structure of the Stadium of Diocletian would have been far more apparent in the medieval period. As you can see from the accompanying photo, the original long elliptical shape of the hippodrome still persists. Like many other great monuments of the Ancient Romans, the hippodrome was essentially abandoned and left ignored during the Middle Ages. The Piazza Navona was originally a hippodrome (a stadium for chariot races) built by Diocletian in Roman antiquity. However the piazza was not always the active tourist and local destination as it is today. Today it is a bustling hub for both tourists and locals alike, with restaurants and bars lining the edges to provide a pleasant outdoor dining experience. The Piazza Navona is placed just west of the Pantheon.

Hippodrome chariot races