The Fountain of Neptune in Piazza della Borsa

Work created by the Bergamo architect Giovanni Mazzoleni (1750). Previously it was located in Piazza Venezia where it had been moved to replace that of Maximilian of Austria, in turn moved to the Miramare Park. Now relocated to Piazza della Borsa, while the statue of Maximilian of Austria has returned to Piazza Venezia after its redevelopment.
- "On 24 March 1755 the first lieutenant of artillery engineer Giovanni Corrado de Gerhard, director of the Commission at the Fabrics, drew up the agreement with Giovanni Mazzoleni" for the erection of a fountain near the Canal Piccolo in the Teresa City ". The contract, approved on April 5 by the civilian captain and military commander Count de Hamilton, provided for the construction of the work according to a general design, to which the sculptor had to comply not only in the dimensions indicated, but above all in the appearance of the sculptural group . At the time, the place on which this elegant fountain was erected was a newly buried area which on the side towards the Old City was delimited by the layout of the medieval walls, demolished with a decree of 1749 by the Empress Maria Theresa, and the only large building then existing was that of the Customs (1750-54). The latter appeared as an extensive construction of linear forms, decorated only by a large balcony superimposed on the eighteenth-century portal and was located on the bottom where the Palazzo del Tergesteo now stands. The extra-urban site opened directly towards the sea in line with the Canal Piccolo, which still exists on the area then buried for the construction of the Palazzo della Borsa: the scenographic enhancement of this square with an irregular triangle shape will therefore be much later. which the fountain has over time found itself in a position neither exactly in the center, nor in a point functionally consistent with the urban structure of the place.
"Under the pretext that" it constituted a heavy obstacle to the road network ", on 9 June 1930 the fountain was removed from the place that had housed it for 165 years. Disassembled, it remained in the municipal warehouses until, on 30 June 1951, the new reconstruction carried out by the sculptor Nino Spagnoli and promoted by the Society of Minerva - was inaugurated in Piazza Venezia in the presence of the mayor Gianni Bartoli. The assembly work involved Spagnoli with a difficult task of restoring and reconstructing the numerous pieces of the fountain, badly preserved or lost during the long thirty-one years of storage. The fountain was placed on the spot where the monument to Ferdinando Massimiliano stood, from here removed for political reasons in 1920. Well this fountain was inserted, surrounded by a small garden with comfortable benches among trees and flowers, in a square with a clear scenery on the open sea, worthy of the dominating gaze of the god Neptune. "