Trevi Fountain

The fountain sits at the terminus of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct Roman technicians traced to a spring some 13 km from the city in 19 BC, supposedly with a virgin's help, a scene later carved onto the fountain's façade. The aqueduct fed the Baths of Agrippa and supplied Rome for more than four centuries. It was damaged during the siege of the Goths under Vitiges in 537 but stayed in use through the Middle Ages, with restorations recorded as early as the 8th century and again by the city's Municipality in the 12th, when the conduit was linked to sources nearer the city at a place then called Trebium.

In 1629, Pope Urban VIII, finding the fountain then on the site insufficiently dramatic, asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to sketch a replacement. The project was abandoned when the pope died in 1644, though Bernini touches survived into the fountain later built there.

Pope Clement XII opened a design competition, and the commission went to Nicola Salvi. A palace, now the Palazzo Poli, already stood on the site, so Salvi built the fountain into its rear façade, its triumphal-arch centrepiece and flanking niches carved to read as an extension of the building. Work began in 1732.

Salvi died in 1751 with the fountain half finished, having already made sure a nearby barber's sign would not spoil the composition by hiding it behind a carved vase Romans nicknamed the asso di coppe, the Ace of Cups. Giuseppe Pannini took over as architect and is credited with substituting the present allegorical figures for planned statues of Agrippa and the virgin Trivia, though Italian accounts instead say he was removed from the project over those same unauthorised design changes and that the sculptor Pietro Bracci was given the task in 1759. Bracci's statue of Oceanus fills the central niche, alongside work by Filippo della Valle, Giovanni Grossi and Andrea Bergondi. Built mainly from travertine quarried near Tivoli, the fountain was finished in 1762 and officially inaugurated on 22 May by Pope Clement XIII.

The fountain was refurbished in 1988 to remove smog discoloration and again in 1998, when its stonework was repaired and recirculating pumps were installed. In January 2013 the fashion house Fendi announced it would sponsor a 20-month, €2.2 million restoration, the most thorough undertaken at the site. Work began in June 2014 and finished in November 2015; the fountain reopened at an official ceremony on the evening of 3 November 2015.

On 21 May 2023, activists from the climate group Ultima Generazione dyed the fountain's water with charcoal; because the fountain recirculates its water, the protest required emptying and replacing some 300,000 litres. Rome's mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, condemned the attack on the heritage site.

After reopening in December 2024 following a three-month restoration, the fountain was fitted with a queuing system capping visitors at 400 at a time. From 2 February 2026 the City Council of Rome began requiring non-residents to buy a €2 ticket to approach the fountain and throw coins, a measure the city's tourism councillor, Alessandro Onorato, said could raise more than €6 million a year: funding restoration, about 25 stewards, and free access for Rome residents to a number of the city's museums.