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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 Origins of the Fountains of Trevi: Truth or Legend?

On 9 June in the year 19 B.C., Agrippa, the son-in-law of the Emperor Augustus, inaugurated a new water aqueduct. Starting from the region of the Ager lucullanus, about halfway between Rome and Tivoli, in the area between the Via Tiburtina and the old Via Collatina, it supplied an additional source of water for the fountains and citizens of the city.

Early historians of Rome say there were two reasons for giving the name Vergine to this new “life-blood of water” that Agrippa had provided, but I shall quote only from a 16th century author, who stated that the first was “because it was a virgin shepherdess who showed the spring to soldiers seeking water” – a scene that was recorded for posterity in paintings in a pavilion beside the source of the aqueduct; the second, because an attempt was made to mix a polluted little stream of water nearby – then called “Herculaneus” – with the pure life-blood of the Vergine water: “the water from Herculaneus was put into the aqueduct of the Aqua Vergine... and that was why, like a virgin corrupted by a man, the Aqua Vergine lost its goodness so that there… the male stream of water was miraculously removed from the Aqua Vergine”.

Now, apart from the fact that at the time of Benedict XIV (in 1744) that impassioned “male stream of water” was put back into the Aqua Vergine conduit once and for all, it is impossible to say whether or not the display fountain that would eventually become the terminal showpiece of the aqueduct in Rome already existed as a fountain known as “Trevi”. All that is certain is that the Vergine aqueduct was carried on arches – some of which still survived at the beginning of the 17th century – that ended right behind the site of the present water fountain and that the showpiece was probably not far from the Baths of Agrippa, in the few yards between the Pantheon (which has it’s own fountain) and the church of Saint Ignatius. Next Page...