"This red granite obelisk, oldest of things, even in Rome, rises in the centre of the piazza, with a four-fold fountain at its base. All Roman works and ruins (whether of the empire, the far-off republic, or the still more distant kings) assume a transient, visionary, and impalpable character, when we think that this indestructible monument supplied one of the recollections which Moses and the Israelites bore from Egypt into the desert. Perchance, on beholding the cloudy pillar and fiery column, they whispered awe-stricken to one another, 'In its shape it is like that old obelisk which we and our fathers have so often seen on the borders of the Nile.' And now that very obelisk, with hardly a trace of decay upon it, is the first thing that the modern traveller sees after entering the Flaminian Gate."--_Hawthorne's Transformation._ It was on the left of the Piazza, at the foot of what was even then called "the Hill of Gardens," that Nero was buried (A.D. 68). "When Nero was dead, his nurse Eclaga, with Alexandra, and Acte the famous concubine, having wrapped his remains in rich white stuff, embroidered with gold, deposited them in the Domitian monument, which is seen in the Campus-Martius under the Hill of Gardens. The tomb was of porphyry, having an altar of Luna marble, surrounded by a balustrade of Thasos marble."--_Suetonius._ Church tradition tells that from the tomb of Nero afterwards grew a gigantic walnut-tree, which became the resort of innumerable crows,--so numerous as to become quite a pest to the neighbourhood. In the eleventh century, Pope Paschal II. dreamt that these crows were demons, and that the Blessed Virgin commanded him to cut down and burn the tree ("albero malnato"), and build a sanctuary to her honour in its place. A church was then built by means of a collection amongst the common people; hence the name which it still retains of "St. Mary of the People." _Sta. Maria del Popolo_ was rebuilt by Bacio Pintelli for Sixtus IV. in 1480, and very richly adorned. It was modernized by Bernini for Alexander VII. (Fabio Chigi, 1655-67), of whom it was the family burial-place, but it still retains many fragments of beautiful fifteenth century work (the principal door of the nave is a fine example of this); and its interior is a perfect museum of sculpture and art.