Skip to content
eFountain
Sign in

Rome, Italy

The Trevi Fountain, Rome

Almost everyone who throws a coin into water is, knowingly or not, imitating Rome. The Trevi Fountain did not invent the gesture — people had been dropping metal into springs for two thousand years before it was built — but it gave the gesture a script, a camera angle and a promise, and the rest of the world adopted all three.

A fountain at the end of an aqueduct

The Trevi is the finishing flourish of the Acqua Vergine, an aqueduct first opened in 19 BC to bring water into the city from springs several miles east. Roman fountains of this kind are called mostre — literally show-pieces — because they exist to make the arrival of the water visible and grand rather than merely useful.

The design is Nicola Salvi's, chosen in a competition in 1732. Salvi died in 1751 with the work unfinished; Giuseppe Pannini brought it to completion and the fountain was inaugurated in 1762. Its centrepiece is Oceanus riding a shell chariot drawn by two sea horses, one calm and one wild — the two tempers of water, carved into the same wall.

The rule, and where it comes from

The instruction is precise and everyone repeats it: take a coin in your right hand, turn your back to the fountain, and throw it over your left shoulder into the water. Do that, and you will return to Rome.

The three-coin version — one for a return, one for a romance, one for a marriage — owes most of its fame to a 1954 film, Three Coins in the Fountain, which took an existing local superstition and gave it a global audience. Six years later Federico Fellini filmed Anita Ekberg wading into the basin in La Dolce Vita, and the Trevi stopped being a fountain in Rome and became the fountain.

The turned back matters more than it looks. You are not aiming; you are giving something up without watching where it lands. That is what separates a wish from a bet.

What happens to the coins

The basin is swept most nights. Workers push the coins into a pile with rubber squeegees, vacuum them up, and the haul is counted, dried and sorted — it arrives in every currency in circulation, plus a steady trickle of buttons, tokens and things that are not money at all.

The proceeds go to Caritas, the Catholic charity that runs soup kitchens, shelters and a free clinic in the city. The total runs to well over a million euros a year, which makes the Trevi one of the most productive collection boxes in the world by a wide margin.

Taking coins out is theft, and it is prosecuted. For years a handful of people made a living fishing the basin with magnets and rakes before the city closed the practice down.

If you go

The square is busiest between ten in the morning and eight in the evening, and in high summer it is genuinely crowded. Early morning is the only reliably quiet hour, and it is also when the light is best, because the fountain faces broadly southwest and the facade catches the sun late in the day.

Wading in is forbidden and fined. So is eating on the steps. Neither rule is new, and both are enforced.

Access to the basin edge is regulated at busy times, so allow for a short wait rather than assuming you can walk straight up to the water.

The Trevi coin ritual, step by step

The whole thing takes about ten seconds. It is worth doing properly.

  1. Take one coin in your right hand

    Any denomination. The tradition says nothing about value, and the fountain has never treated a two-euro wish as more likely than a five-cent one.

  2. Turn your back to the water

    Stand at the balustrade with the fountain behind you. You should not be able to see the basin when you throw.

  3. Throw over your left shoulder

    Right hand, left shoulder, across the body. Do not look round to check where it landed — that is the part people skip and the part that gives the gesture its shape.

  4. Make the wish as the coin leaves your hand

    Silently. The oldest rule attached to wishes anywhere is that saying one out loud spends it.

In short

Completed
1762
Designed by
Nicola Salvi, completed by Giuseppe Pannini
Fed by
The Acqua Vergine aqueduct, opened 19 BC
Coins go to
Caritas Roma

Questions people ask

How many coins should you throw into the Trevi Fountain?
One, if you want to come back to Rome. The three-coin version — return, romance, marriage — comes from a 1954 film rather than from any older Roman tradition, but it is now so widely repeated that both counts are considered correct.
Can you take coins out of the Trevi Fountain?
No. Removing coins from the basin is treated as theft under Italian law and is prosecuted. The money is collected by the city and given to Caritas.
Which hand and which shoulder?
Coin in the right hand, thrown over the left shoulder, with your back to the fountain. Reversing it is the single most common mistake visitors make.

Keep reading

  • Florence, Italy

    Il Porcellino, Florence

    A bronze boar with a snout polished gold by four centuries of hands, and a coin trick that only counts if the money falls through the grate.

  • Bath, England

    The Sacred Spring at Bath

    Before wishing fountains there were sacred springs. The one at Bath gave up twelve thousand Roman coins — and a hundred letters to a goddess.

  • Glastonbury, England

    Chalice Well, Glastonbury

    A spring that runs red with iron and has never been known to fail. Here you leave a ribbon or a word, not a coin.

Make a wish now

eFountain is a wishing fountain that lives on the internet. Toss a coin, make a wish — it is never published. Your first coin is free.

Go to the fountain