I recently became the Rome Editor for a lovely travel site called Wandering Educators, and for my first post I decided to write about the Trevi Fountain. It’s one of Rome’s most popular landmarks, so I thought it would be interesting to delve a bit deeper, as it were, and look at the history behind the tradition of throwing a coin in.
You can read the post here if you’re interested: Rome’s Trevi Fountain: Understanding the Rituals.
Another Rachel’s Rome Writings post coming soon!
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About Rachel McCombie
I graduated from Oxford University in 2009, having spent three years studying Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at St John's College. After graduating I worked as a Geographic Researcher at Holidaylettings.co.uk, spending lots of time writing travel guides to worldwide destinations, and I now work at SEOptimise with a wide range of clients on SEO and social media. In my spare time I like playing and listening to classical music, reading travel magazines, horse riding, gliding, and wine tasting.
Rachel McCombie
Thanks for these interesting insights of the fountain. Didn’t know about the origins of this superstition.
Regarding the custom of throwing coins into the fountain there is also a dark side. The estimated sum of all the money thrown into the water is about 14000 Euros every week! In the past the city of Rome used this money for benificial scopes but … as many times in these cases there is always someone else who turns this into his profit, illegally.
Since years there is a group of thiefs which, in collaboration with the locale police, every night is going to “fish” the coins out of the water. It exists also the video of the program (Le Iene, very famous here) which find out about this scam (see link below).
Feel free to delete this comment if you think this isn’t the right place to post this kind of story (me neither wasn’t very convinced to post it here but I thought you should know in this context). Anyway I don’t want to be the spoilsport and destroy the “Fountain Trevi” dreams of potential Rome visitors
article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8483562/Italian-police-suspended-over-Trevi-Fountain-scam.html
video (however in italian; btw the thiefs are talking roman slang
http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/iene/puntata/223190/roma-ladri-di-monete.html
It’s a shame, isn’t it – although not surprising! Still, it needn’t detract from one’s enjoyment of it