• 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.

Trevi Architects: Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Nicola Salvi

I have shown you that the unpublished drawing is the copy of a lost original by Bernini for the Trevi fountain and put forward the theory that, despite the competition being won by Vanvitelli, Salvi’s design was selected because it was closer in form and spirit to Bernini. Now, by making even a brief comparison between the architecture in the design and what Nicola Salvi actually built  I am certain you will see that this is at once a motive and an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable and, until now, unexplained reasons for that choice. However, before pointing out just how much Salvi’s fountain owes to Bernini, there is another very important thing that you should note.
In honour of a double wedding between the royal families of Spain and Portugal that took place in Rome in 1728, Salvi was commissioned to build one of the “firework engines” that were then so fashionable. These were erected all over the city, with much pomp and an enormous waste of good wood, and were set alight on the evening of the celebrations, to the great jubilation of the crowds, who were usually drunk on the wine from fountains near the “engine”. Each “engine” was specially designed with allusions to the happy event or to the people being honoured, in the form of corny or risqué jokes and mythological or pseudo-philosophical ideas.

Salvi built his “engine” right on top of the Barcaccia. It was an incredible size, almost a skyscraper, about 47m high and very nearly 27m wide, consisting of two tiers, both with columns. The lower tier portrayed the kingdom of the god of marriage, with Hymen seated on his throne with its wide shell back, inside a large niche; above, there was Mount Parnassus with Apollo at the summit and the nine Muses around the base. I will omit any more detailed description because it is not of interest at this point, but I must just emphasise how certain parts of the immense structure reveal that Salvi was undoubtedly familiar with Bernini’s famous design or – and it comes to the same thing – the sketch we are interested in, which was taken from it. Compare the whole centre section of the lower storey: the balustrade, architrave, two Corinthian columns on each side standing forward of the single column, and the large niche beneath a corbel with two festoons springing from a large mask are all features taken wholesale from Bernini’s design.

Yet there is another fact even more important than these themes (which appear in almost identical format on the façade of Sant’Agnese in Piazza Navona): while the clouds spreading at the bottom of the “engine” correspond to the rocks in the fountain, the whole pyramidal arrangement of the figures on the “engine”, culminating in the seated Hymen, is precisely the same as Bernini’s arrangement of the Muses, which culminates in Apollo, also seated. Whereas Gian Lorenzo’s design has Pegasus at the feet of Apollo, Salvi’s construction echoes this with Hymen, who has Cupid flying around the globe at his feet. Finally, another important detail: Salvi was unable to get Parnassus out of his mind and used it to top off the whole structure. Next Page...