Bernini's elephant and Piazza della Minerva

An obelisk in the friars' garden

It all began with a find. In the garden of the Dominican friars of the Minerva, an Egyptian obelisk came to light, and Pope Alexander VII, of the Chigi family, wanted it raised in the square. He's the same pope who replaced two columns of the Pantheon's portico, just round the corner, and left his family's star on their capitals. The idea for the monument came from Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the man behind the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona. The sculptor who carved it was Ercole Ferrata, in 1667. The whole thing is dedicated to Wisdom.

Rome's municipal heritage office, the Sovrintendenza Capitolina, calls it the elefantino, the little elephant. The name suits him: there's nothing wild about him. He looks more like a family pet who's been roped into helping with a house move.

What the pedestal says

On the base there's a Latin inscription, and it's the key to the whole thing. Going by the transcription we've been able to consult, which we haven't yet checked against the stone, its gist is roughly this: just as the elephant, the strongest animal, carries the emblems of Egyptian learning, only a robust mind can bear solid wisdom.

A robust mind, but whose? The monument has been read as a compliment to the pope who commissioned it. Alexander VII would be the mind strong enough to carry knowledge, just as the elephant carries the obelisk. Propaganda with a trunk, you might say.

Thirty-four years earlier

Now look at the church: Santa Maria sopra Minerva. In its Dominican convent, on 22 June 1633, a man of almost seventy knelt before the inquisitors and read and signed a text in which he abjured, cursed and detested what he stood accused of: having defended the idea that the Earth moves. His name was Galileo Galilei. The document itself spells it out: "in Rome, in the convent of the Minerva".

And the famous "Eppur si muove", "and yet it moves", that he supposedly muttered as he got to his feet? You won't find it in the text of the abjuration. Where the line comes from is another story, and its origin is something we've failed to pin down.

Nor did he end up in a dungeon. Straight after the abjuration, a room on the first floor of Villa Medici, the residence of the Tuscan ambassador, became both his lodging and his prison. He'd already stayed there during the trial, and wrote that he was treated very kindly, nothing like the ropes, chains and cells he'd feared.

Thirty-four years later, outside that same convent, a monument to Wisdom went up. Intentional irony? There's no sign that anyone had Galileo in mind when it was designed. The elephant celebrates a pope's wisdom, not an astronomer's. But the coincidence is there for all to see, and everyone can read it as they like.

The story had a very late epilogue. In 1992, addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II spoke of "the errors committed" in the Galileo case and called him a sincere believer, more perceptive than his theologian opponents. It wasn't a legal rehabilitation, but it was a change of tone after almost three hundred and sixty years.

A goddess in the name and a river on the façade

So why "sopra Minerva", "above Minerva"? Because there was a temple to that goddess nearby, and until the fifteenth century the church was simply called "Santa Maria de Minerva". What you shouldn't take for granted is that the church stands on the temple's foundations: the name says next door, not necessarily on top.

The façade holds another witness. If you go closer, look for plaques at different heights: each one records the level the Tiber reached in a great flood, between 1422 and 1870. The river doesn't run through this square, and yet it reached this door more than once.

And if you go inside, the church keeps two treasures you can't see from the square: Michelangelo's Risen Christ and the sarcophagus of St Catherine of Siena.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: designed by Bernini, carved by Ercole Ferrata in 1667 at the wish of Alexander VII, after the obelisk turned up in the Dominican convent's garden; dedicated to Wisdom. Galileo abjured in that convent in 1633.
• A joke with no source: that Bernini deliberately had the elephant turn its backside on the Dominican friars. You'll hear it. We haven't found a single source to back it up: it's a guides' joke we haven't been able to trace.
• A phrase with no trace: "Eppur si muove" doesn't appear in the text of the abjuration.
• Our own reading: the irony of Wisdom planted in front of Galileo's convent. It's a coincidence; any intention is undocumented.
• The nickname: perhaps you got here searching for "Pulcino della Minerva". That nickname doesn't appear in the sources we've read, so we can't tell you where it comes from, and we won't sell you an explanation.

Where to hear it

The elephant and Galileo are two consecutive stops on "The Pantheon, the Minerva and Piazza Colonna", Podtour's free route in Rome: eleven stories in just over a kilometre, from the Column of Marcus Aurelius to Borromini's spiral, by way of the Pantheon. It's free. What Galileo went through at Villa Medici is told on another route, "The Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain".

If you're planning your trip, our Rome guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Sovrintendenza Capitolina (C. Spetia), "L'elefantino della Minerva: il restauro", 2013 (in Italian). https://www.sovraintendenzaroma.it/cosa_facciamo/attivita_sul_territorio/didattica/l_elefantino_della_minerva_il_restauro
• Galileo Galilei, text of the abjuration (Le Opere, Edizione Nazionale, vol. XIX, pp. 406–407), on Wikisource (in Italian). https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Abiura_di_Galileo_Galilei
• John Paul II, address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 31 October 1992 (in Italian). https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1992/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19921031_accademia-scienze.html
• Touring Club Italiano, "S. Maria sopra Minerva" (in Italian). https://www.touringclub.it/destinazioni/roma/vedere/213879-s-maria-sopra-minerva
• S. B. Platner and T. Ashby, "Minerva Chalcidica", A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, Oxford University Press, 1929, on LacusCurtius. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/Minerva_Chalcidica.html
• Howard Hibbard, "Bernini, Gian Lorenzo", Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 9, 1967 (in Italian). https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gian-lorenzo-bernini_(Dizionario-Biografico)/