• Back to Trevi Fountain Home Page
• 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.

Increasing Water Flow to the Trevi Fountain

During the numerous invasions that delighted Rome at the dawn of the Middle Ages, the famous siege conducted by Vitige (as long ago as 537) brought about what may have been the first in a long series of interruptions to be suffered by the Aqua Vergine and the other water aqueducts. However, unlike the others, as the Aqua Vergine aqueduct was probably the shortest path for the water, this was the one that could most easily and cheaply be repaired each time.
Since it is the famouse outdoor water fountains of the City of Rome that are still the main subject of this section of garden-fountains.com, I shall save us all the trouble of studying the many occasions on which this aqueduct was restored by the various pontiffs, starting with Hadrian I (775-92). Instead, I shall just give a short account of the great and significant hydraulic water operations which, planned or at least proposed at the time of Paul III, were later undertaken by Pius IV (1559-65). I shall do this primarily to explain the name Trevi, which has been applied both to the Aqua Vergine (which the Romans almost always knew only as “Aqua di Trevi”) and to the great water fountain it supplies.

As already stated, after first proposing, in 1535, to invest a large sum of money “to bring the water for the fountain from Salone” (i.e. Trevi), in preparation for the official visit to The City of Rome of the Emperor Charles V – that kind soul who, nine years earlier, had put the city to the sword, Paul III preferred to spend the funds on triumphal arches, statuary, and “flattening” buildings and older fountains that were cluttering up the city. Some years later, Pius IV (Medici) made another attempt to deal with the still unsolved question of increasing the water flow of the ancient “Aqua di Trevi”, which was very poor, by adding water from new springs, pools, and ponds discovered in the area of Salone, adjacent to the old water sources. In fact, in May 1561, the Capitol decided to elect a committee of “gentlemen to see… if the water from Salone can be brought to Rome and to the ‘Treio’ fountain; and whether the water can be brought by the same route that the Chamber indicated to Master Antonio [Trevisi] in the clauses [relating to] the conduit, and if it would pass along that route”. Next Page...