Visiting the Trevi Fountain in Rome kind of feels like a right of passage when visiting Italy.
I mean everybody’s done it, and because of that, it means you should too, right?
Right.
But the thing you should know when visiting the Trevi Fountain in Rome is that you won’t be alone. Those Instagram pictures you see where beautiful women are perched on the edge without so much as another human in sight? Yeah… It’s not quite like that!
Turns out there will be a good thousand or so people there too. Especially if you go during the Easter holidays as I did… #RookieError
But I can never begrudge a crowd. Sure, being 5 ft 4 means that whenever I’m in a large crowd it’s easy to get lost, pushed or trodden on. But that crowd was there to see the exact same thing that I was.
Located at the junction of three roads in Rome, designed by the Italian architect Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city. You can even go underground! It took around 30 years (from 1732 – 1762) to construct, and it is undoubtedly one of the most famous.
You see, as much as I love to get off the beaten track I’m a total sucker for hitting the popular spots. The places that you’d see in movies and think to yourself “I wonder if I’ll get to see that one day” and the fact that I have the ability to make stuff like this happen, still blows my mind.
The fountain has been featured in numerous shows and movies, such as La Dolce Vita, Roman Holiday and the classic romcom “When in Rome”. It’s adorned with numerous sculptures relating to the sea, such as seahorses and Neptune, the Roman God of the Sea. So when I stood at the Trevi Fountain in Rome, at the base of the 26.3-metre tall fountain, surrounded by thousands of strangers with selfie sticks in the air all waiting not-so-patiently for their chance to snap a little memento of this, I felt happy… Even when the water splashed and left me with a dripping wet behind!
The Truth Behind The Trevi Fountain Coins
As is true with most historical places, there’s always a myth or a legend attached to popular monuments. With the Trevi Fountain, it’s that you should toss a coin into the fountain with your right hand, over your left shoulder. Supposedly, doing this will ensure that in the future, you will return to Rome. But if you do this three times, the second coin is believed to ensure a new romance and the third will supposedly ensure marriage.
It’s a pretty popular belief too because every day over €3,000 is tossed into the fountain! It’s such a popular money-maker that the municipality of Rome collects the coins every day to stop them from being stolen, and has created a fund to help finance a supermarket for people with lower incomes.
The Trevi Fountain was restored in 2015, closing it for a few years. But since then it has gone back to its usual status of being an absolute iconic landmark and must-see for anybody visiting Rome.
