Spanish Steps the foundation of Rome, April 21, part of the steps are covered by pots of azaleas, up until early May. In modern times the Spanish Steps have included a small cut-flower market. The steps are not a place for eating lunch, being forbidden by Roman urban regulations, but they are usually crowded with people. The 1953 film "Roman Holiday", starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, made the Spanish Steps famous to an American audience. The apartment that was the setting for "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" (1961) is halfway up on the right. Bernardo Bertolucci's "Besieged" (1998) is also
Spanish Steps of the English Romantic generation. On the same right side stands the 15th-century former cardinal Lorenzo Cybo de Mari's palace, now Ferrari di Valbona, a building altered in 1936 to designs by Marcello Piacentini, the main city planner during Fascism, with modern terraces perfectly in harmony with the surrounding baroque context. At the top, the stairway ramp up the "Pincio" which is the Pincian Hill. From the top of the steps the Villa Medici can be reached. During Christmas time a 19th-century criba manger is displayed on the first landing of the staircase. During Springtime, just before the anniversary of