McNair Summer Research Program
Faculty Mentor(s)
Marcel Sanchez-Prieto
Publication Date
Summer 8-13-2026
Disciplines
Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture | Cultural History | Historic Preservation and Conservation | Landscape Architecture | Other Architecture
Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement
Rome's nasoni are small public drinking fountains that have provided free water throughout the city since 1874. There are approximately 2,500–2,800 nasoni in Rome, actively supplying people with free drinking water. Although they are usually understood as ordinary and mundane hydraulic infrastructure, their persistence across different political periods makes them useful objects for examining the relationship between architecture, public service, and political meaning. This research asks how the forms, materials, and spatial contexts of late-nineteenth-century nasoni differed from fountains constructed or modified during the Fascist era.
Over my three weeks of fieldwork in Rome, I documented seventy-five public drinking fountains through photography, typological classification, material observation, and through contextual analysis. The study compares the standardized nineteenth-century nasone with Pietro Lombardi's fontanelle rionali and the Fascist-period Lupa type. Drawing on Michael Billig's concept of banal nationalism, it considers how everyday infrastructure can become a carrier of political and cultural memory.
Preliminary findings suggest that the fountain's civic function remained stable even as its architectural expression varied. The nasone therefore emerges as an everyday monument: an object capable of simultaneously serving the public and communicating changing ideas of place, identity, and power.
Included in
Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Cultural History Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, Landscape Architecture Commons, Other Architecture Commons