Sant'Agnese in Agone the commission, Borromini was one of many harsh critics that assailed the project's engineering. Ultimately, in a severe blow to Bernini's prestige as an architect, the facade bell-towers were torn down, and never rebuilt. Sant'Agnese in Agone Sant'Agnese in Agone (also called Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona) is a 17th-century Baroque church in Rome, Italy. It faces onto the Piazza Navona, one of the main urban spaces in the historic centre of the city and the site where the Early Christian Saint Agnes was martyred in the ancient Stadium of Domitian. Construction began in 1652 under the architects Girolamo Rainaldi and
Sant'Agnese in Agone of this church is unrelated to the ‘agony’ of the martyr: "in agone" was the ancient name of Piazza Navona ("piazza in agone"), and meant instead, from the Greek, ‘in the site of the competitions’, because Piazza Navona was built on the form of an ancient Roman stadium on the Greek model, with one flat end, and was used for footraces. From ‘in agone’, the popular use and pronunciation changed the name into ‘Navona’, but other roads in the area kept the original name. Bernini's "Fountain of the Four Rivers" is situated in front of the church. It is often