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• Origins of the Trevi Fountain
  • Trevi Fountain Origins 1
  • Trevi Fountain Origins 2
  • Trevi Fountain Origins 3
  • Trevi Fountain Origins 4
  • Trevi Fountain Origins 5
• Trevi Fountain & Jacopo della Porta
  • Trevi and Della Porta 1
  • Trevi and Della Porta 2
  • Trevi and Della Porta 3
• Trevi Fountain and Paul V
  • Trevi Fountain and Paul V page 1
  • Trevi Fountain and Paul V page 2
• Trevi Fountain and Bernini
  • Bernini's First Trevi Design 1
  • Bernini's First Trevi Design 2
  • Bernini's First Trevi Design 3
• Trevi and Alexander
• Trevi Competition in 1732
  • Trevi Completion in 1732 page 1
  • Trevi Completion in 1732 page 2
  • Trevi Completion in 1732 page 3
• Bernini Second Design
  • Bernini Second Design 1
  • Bernini Second Design 2
  • Bernini Second Design 3
  • Bernini Second Design 4
  • Bernini Second Design 5
  • Bernini Second Design 6
  • Bernini Second Design 7
• Trevi Architects: Bernini/ Salvi
  • Trevi Architects 1
  • Trevi Architects 2
  • Trevi Architects 3
  • Trevi Architects 4
  • Trevi Architects 5
• A Final Thought

The "Coin Throwing" Legend of the Trevi Fountain

A well told legend holds that if visitors to the Trevi Fountain throws a coin into the fountain, they are ensured a return to The City of Rome.

Other interpretations are that two coins thrown will ensure a marriage will occur soon, and three coins leads to a divorce or breakup. Another version of this legend is that it is lucky to throw three coins with one's right hand over one's left shoulder into the Waters of the Trevi Fountain.

Approximately $3500 is thrown into the Trevi Fountain each day and the coins are collected at night, and used to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's poor population.

The Papal Council and The Trevi Fountain

Although it would be extremely difficult to establish the dimensions of the fountain just described, a meticulous and interesting “survey and estimate for masonry and chisel work… measured by Master Jacopo della Porta, Architect” in September 1563 tells us that the water basin was exactly 13.5m long and that one side was 8.33m wide (the left side, nearest the usual “trough”); the other side (towards the arch measured 8.77m and the fountain was reached by way of a ramp of wide shallow steps descending from the even surface of the piazza.

In the first and now far-off part of this section of garden-fountains.com, I mentioned frequently in connection with Jacopo della Porta how, from the period when the “Congregation for the Fountains” decided in 1570 to build a large number of water fountains using the Aqua Vergine and, only a little later, Sixtus V and the City Authorities ordered a new series of water outdoor fountains using the Aqua Felice, it was always Master Jacopo who provided the designs and directed operations. Now, with the Capitoline document from which I just quoted, we see that his activities as a builder of fountains began even earlier, as here he is, a young man of barely 26 or so, working on a fountain for the Roman City Council (which, the next year, 1564, would appoint him “Architect of the Fountains of the Roman People”) and I believe we can say that it was in fact in 1563, with the Trevi fountain, that Jacopo embarked on his long career around water fountains.

It must surely seem strange that while the Papal Council and the Capitol were so keen on building fountains – some of them quite substantial – throughout the long period of Jacopo’s career (he died in 1602), none of the documents so far known (other than those relating to the restoration of the fountain in 1563) make any mention whatsoever of plans for a more elegant arrangement of that ancient and, I would almost say, glorious façade. Yes, you would be right to think it strange, because at least one plan for the fountain actually does exist.

In 1910, Egger published a small selection of “architectural plans of public fountains by early masters” belonging to the most important library and archive collections in Vienna. Table number 19 in that work was the interesting water-color of the fountain, which in fact might as well never have been published before because, if I am not mistaken, no one has ever given it a moment’s consideration. Next Page on Trevi & Della Porta...