• 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.

The Trevi Fountain up to the time of Alexander VII (1667)

So far we have seen an almost unbroken sequence of attempts by various popes to complete the Trevi fountain: Clement VIII in 1600, Paul V in 1615 and Urban VIII in 1640. I have already told you how Urban’s successor, Innocent X Pamphili (1644-55), had only one fountain built during his pontificate – the Four Rivers – and that for it, he diverted 150-180 ounces of water from the Trevi fountain. Such action proves not only that he was not interested in the Trevi but also that he had abandoned the matter once and for all because, for him, the problem of a showpiece for the Aqua Vergine had been solved by his fountain in Piazza Navona.

This seems all the more true when we remember that, in a way, Alexander VII (Chigi, 1655-67) followed in Innocent’s footsteps. In fact, in the brief note from the Chigi Codice which I mentioned on page 106, stated that in the spring of 1667 he proposed moving “the Trevi display fountain to Piazza Colonna” – the square where his family’s huge residence stood, and still stands to this day.
To solve the problem of the Trevi, Bernini probably had another amazing idea in mind: to move Trajan’s column and pair it up with the column of Marcus Aurelius that was already there, and then to create two huge fountains around the columns. In summer, the fountains could have been used to flood poor Piazza Colonna.

Apart from this crime that did not come off – which we know about thanks to some statements Bernini made during his short stay in France in 1665 – we have two designs by Pietro Berrettini da Cortona. These are important mainly because they solve the problem of the Trevi with a gigantic façade-cum-fountain, probably intended to face east, so it is very likely true that Pietro da Cortona based his overall arrangement (except for some of the details, i.e. the huge rocks) on the design that Gian Lorenzo had prepared for Urban VIII’s fountain in 1640, if not on another design by the same artist, which we shall examine later.