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The first phrase of the first inscription on the fountain: "Alexander VI [1492-1503] and Juan Cardinal Lopez of Valencia restored this ruined fountain, noble in its antiquity" tells us that the first documented water fountain restoration, which must certainly have been major since it was felt worth recording, took place between 1496 and 1501, at the hand of no less a figure than Bramante, as we discover in a passage by Vasari: "Because of his ideas Bramante served Pope Alexander VI as assistant architect for the fountain in Trastevere". Moreover, since the same phrase referred at that time to "this… fountain, noble in its antiquity" it is obvious that it must be much older than the plan of Rome (c. 1464) mentioned previously.
And there’s another thing. The mists surrounding this expression, which says everything but tells us nothing, seem to evaporate if we believe what every guide to Rome, from the 17th century to the present, has to say. Copying each other’s stories and misunderstandings, their accounts relate that the fountain was probably built by Pope Hadrian I (772-795). However, since there is not the slightest reference to it throughout his life, I think the story must have been thought up by the first person who wrote about it, around the middle of the 17th century.
Finally, before finishing with this first phrase, I’d like to tell you about the witty Latin inscription Cardinal Lopez had put on the fountain to commemorate the restoration he financed. Unfortunately, the inscription no longer exists, but it was a play on his family name [Lopez – wolf] and went something like this: "If the gentle murmur of the water that falls into shivering pools lulls you to pleasant sleep; if you drink its clear drops and it washes you sparkling clean, give thanks to the Wolf who made the fountain. Now, Romulus, look at this fountain and the part he played in it and tell me the truth: Is not this Male Wolf as much a father to you as the Female Wolf was a mother to Remus?"
Going ahead now with our reading of the first inscription on the fountain, and we see that only a few years after the previous work, in 1509 to be precise, "Pope Julius II and the Cardinal of Savona, Marco Vigerio embellished this fountain, which had lost its shape".
In 1590-91, following irreparable damage to the conduits of the old Aqua Alsietina that used to feed this fountain (more about this later), the source was taken for the first time from the Aqua Felice. It was Pope Sixtus V who had brought this latter water supply to Rome three years earlier and it was now carried to the fountain along the brand new conduit that ran down from the Quirinale via the bridge known variously as Ponte Gregoriano, Santa Maria or Senatorio, and which we know as the Ponte Rotto or Broken Bridge that stands close to the Palatine Bridge.
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