Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers

It may be gloomy February but Bernini's famous Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona in Rome glints in its clean marble glory. It was under restoration for two years - aside from the apparent cleaning, restorers have installed water filters to reduce calcium deposits, and a shock system to deter pigeons!
Bernini was a "Renaissance man" in Baroque times, capable of working in all media and revolutionizing every genre he touched, including fountains. The story goes that Pope Innocent X held a competition to build a fountain here. The main rule was that you had to use this obelisk, a Roman copy of an original Egyptian one; it was lying in the nearby Circus Maximus and the Pope wanted to reuse it in his piazza.
Bernini was not invited to participate in the competition (at that moment he was a bit out of favour), so he made a model and had a friend sneak it into a room where the Pope was likely to see it. Indeed the Pope liked it and hired him, despite the extravagance of the project, and that it cost way more than the others.
What that man could do with marble!