Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, used to boast that he had inherited a city of brick and left a city of marble. Modesty was never one of his strong points. This was, after all, the emperor who wrote an autobiography called the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (literally “Things the Divine Augustus Got Done”) and insisted it was inscribed on monuments throughout the Roman Empire.
But such was the scale and ambition of his building programme that here, at least, he had a point. Within just 13 years (27 BCE – 14 CE), Augustus’ regime bedecked the imperial city with many architectural masterpieces, including the Pantheon, the Ara Pacis, and the Augustan Forum, not to mention aqueducts like the Aqua Virgo, which until recent weeks still fed the Trevi Fountain.
Cities like Rome, which are rooted in their past, cannot help but invite historical comparisons, however unfair these might be. The emperors funded much of their building programmes by plundering faraway lands — much of modern-day France, Spain and Turkey in Augustus’ case. Giorgia Meloni’s government cannot count upon the coffers of a Caesar, and the European Union might raise a finger of complaint if Italy invaded France and tried to return it to Roman rule. But while I can forgive today’s Romans for lacking their ancestors’ spending power, what I cannot fathom is why they have abandoned all sense of pride.
Which brings me onto the tragic plywood pool installed in front of the Trevi Fountain last week.
The Trevi Fountain’s Facelift
Just to recap – the Trevi Fountain is one of the world’s most visited monuments. It draws somewhere in the region of 10,000 to 12,000 visitors each day who toss €3,000 in loose change into (and often around) its waters. A masterpiece of Baroque architecture, the Trevi Fountain has been immortalised in cinema, first in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and then through the infinitely more iconic Lizzie McGuire Movie some 40 years later. In short, inquire into the itinerary of anybody visiting Rome, and the Trevi Fountain is sure to feature.
All of this begs the question as to why someone senior thought it would be a good idea to stick a plywood pool in front of it, barely hidden behind a tall fence covered by transparent plastic.
Okay, this question is mainly rhetorical.
The Trevi Fountain is currently undergoing a €300,000 face-lift for the upcoming Jubilee, and to complete this procedure workers have had to drain the basin. Given that only eejits throw coins into drained basins, it makes practical sense to install a pool in front of it (at least as much as throwing coins into fountains makes sense in the first place) to prevent thrown coins scratching the bottom of the fountain, getting in the way of renovators, and slowing down their work. But why — oh why — does it look so shit.
A Bunch of Tossers
The Trevi Fountain coin toss legend first came to prominence with the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain starring the all-star cast of… *Googles* … Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire and Jean Peters. According to the legend, any visitor who throws one coin over their shoulder into the fountain will return to Rome in the future.
In truth, the idea of throwing money into fountains for luck predates this film by thousands of years. Humans have always assigned a divine aspect to springs and fountains and made offerings to them for reasons of health and welfare.
Suetonius tells us that each year people would throw coins into the Lacus Curtius fountain in the Roman Forum as thanks for the emperor Augustus’ wellbeing. Another of the forum’s fountains, the Lacus Iuturnae, was named after the water nymph Juturna, and frequented by the sick and elderly who believed in the water’s restorative qualities.
In the Trevi Fountain’s case, legend has it that if you throw one coin over your shoulder into the fountain, this ensures that one day you’ll return to Rome. Throw two coins and you’ll fall in love with an attractive Italian. Throw three and you’ll marry them.
Were my late grandmother still around, she’d tell you that that first promise is total horse-sh*t. Had she been a statistician, she might also tell you that the demographic data fails to support the others. Sure, during the war years they might have been giving away hot Italians for a thruppence. But the country’s endemic brain drain and nose-diving birth rate means that attractive Italians are increasingly few and far between. So if you’re a Trevi Fountain tourist lucky enough to be rich in loose change – place your orders soon.
Anyway. Counting on tourists to make the pilgrimage to a famous fountain to perform the coin-tossing ritual relies on more than goodwill. There’s an unspoken expectation that the fountain will be photogenic at least, breathtakingly beautiful at best.
Which again begs the question why someone senior thought it would be a good idea to stick a plywood pool in front the Trevi Fountain, barely hidden behind a tall fence covered by transparent plastic unless it’s either total incompetence or complete resignation to the realities of overtourism.
My hot take is that it’s both.
Overtourism – the Underwhelming Reality
The pervasive albeit unofficial opinion in Rome’s tourism industry is that, save another pandemic, tourists will always provide a steady source of income. Standards can slip to ludicrously low standards and there will still be a never-ending stream of people lining up to throw their coins, snap their selfies, and grab a gelato beside the Trevi Fountain. I fear the penny has yet to drop about how climate change will ruin Rome’s reputation as a viable summer destination. But that’s a conversation for another day.
Now, Italy’s incumbent government has already clearly decided to embrace the most vacuous brand of overtourism. How else can we explain the launch of last year’s Open to Meraviglia campaign, fronted by an Instagram-influencer incarnation of Botticelli’s Venus who snaps selfies with her back to Italy’s most famous landmarks, the Trevi Fountain included?
The frenzied popularity of the Trevi Fountain proves that many people don’t visit places because they’re beautiful, or atmospheric, or because they evoke any particular emotions. They visit them because they’re led to think they have to by tired tropes and TikToks. One imagines that this informed the decision-making of the person responsible for installing the bare, exposed, Ikea-discount range Trevi Fountain pool, which has been variously described as “ugly“, a “municipal swimming pool“, and “the saddest thing I’ve seen in Italy“.
Some in the industry are fighting back against the onslaught of overtourism. One recent example is Unexpected Italy, an app founded by Elisabetta Faggiana and Savio Losito, which focuses on local recommendations and quality experiences found off the beaten path.
But as long as the authorities continue to encourage people to stream here and pay money to see something objectively sh*t, those in the tourism industry have no incentive to up their game and adapt. Tourists will still travel to Rome so they can throw coins into the Trevi Fountain. That the fountain is without water, and these coins will therefore scratch and damage its basin, is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the current state of Roman (over)tourism.
