Largo Baracche

The red and yellow facade of the church of Santa Maria ad Ogni Bene dei Sette Dolori anchors Largo Baracche. The square takes its name from wooden barracks erected here by the Spanish viceroy in the seventeenth century to house troops during civil unrest. While the soldiers are long gone, the space maintains a cramped intensity born from that military origin. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the barracks vanished, leaving behind this wide, uneven clearing tucked deep into the dense Quartieri Spagnoli.