Page 6 of the Public Fountains of Italy
The Fountain of the Mercato Nuovo in Florence, consists of an excellent copy, by Pietro Tacca, of an antique bronze, now in the Uffizi Gallery, representing a reclining boar. The Fountain of Trevi in Rome, marks the termination of an ancient Roman aqueduct. The water, celebrated for its purity, is conducted by a subterranean channel, fourteen miles long, built by the Emperor Agrippa in 19 B.C., to supply his baths. In 1453 Pope Nicholas v. increased the water supply (which now yields above thirteen million cubic feet daily) by conducting hither the main stream of the aqueduct instead of a branch of it, and the fountain then exchanged its ancient name of "Aqua Virgo" derived from a tradition that the spring was discovered by a maiden, for that of "Trevi," from its three outlets. The water apparently springs from the elaborate architectural facade that forms one of the walls of the Palazzo Poli. In the central niche is Neptune, flanked by statues of Health and Fertility. The design of the present fountain, which was completed in 1762, was long supposed to be by Salvi, an otherwise unknown artist, but recently a design by Bernini has been found from which Salvi evidently closely copied. In spite of the great celebrity of the Trevi Fountain and the undoubted magnificence of its general aspect, it lacks unity of effect, and is overloaded and over-ornate. This is the fountain into the basin of which sentimental travelers throw a coin, that their future return to Rome may be assured. Perhaps the most wholly satisfactory, and yet the most modest fountain which Bernini has left us is the Fountain of the Triton, named from its figure of a triton borne upon a dolphin and blowing his horn into the heavens.
The little fountain embellished with bronze figures in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele at Faenza dates from 1621. The town of Fano was founded as " Fanum Fortunae" by the Romans, who erected there a temple to Fortune. This fact is commemorated by an unusually graceful fountain surmounted by a figure of the goddess. The fountain proper was finished about 1576: the statue is of more recent origin.
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