Fontana del Nettuno (Fontana dei Cavalli)

Near Porta Dante, Neptune stands on a shell drawn by two hippocamps, holding his trident above the stone basin. Conegliano’s Fontana del Nettuno, also popularly known as the Fountain of the Horses, combines a public fountain documented by 1337 with an eighteenth-century statue group and a nineteenth-century relocation.

Why it matters

The basin stood in the old market square by 1337 and is attributed to Filippo Spongadi of Verona. A later restoration added an obelisk at its centre. In 1770 the obelisk was replaced by the marble group of Neptune and hippocamps, brought from the garden of Villa Foscolo in Oderzo. On 19 October 1838 the fountain was moved to its present position for the passage of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria. A plaque commemorates the relocation, which the regional bulletin connects with the town’s grant of the title Città Regia. Sources differ on whether the fountain survived the 1917–18 shelling or the 1944 raids unscathed; both accounts describe damage to nearby buildings.

What to notice

The two creatures drawing Neptune’s shell are hippocamps, with horses’ foreparts and fish tails. The regional bulletin notes that the popular name Fontana dei Cavalli is therefore technically a misnomer. Neptune faces east and holds the trident in his right hand; water flows from the creatures’ mouths into the older basin. A surviving fragment of the town walls rises behind the fountain, alongside the plaque marking its 1838 move.

Context and history

The fountain’s first location was the market square now called Piazzetta 18 Luglio 1866. The statue group had stood in Oderzo before its installation in Conegliano in 1770; the regional bulletin also traces it through the park of Villa Guia at Fratta. The 1838 relocation followed the drying of the Brentazzo spring that had supplied the fountain and placed it near the western gate of the walled town.