If you ask to people which is the most famous fountain in the world, they will tell you that it is Trevi Fountain.

Scenic and majestic, you can feel  its presence at the beginning of the street that lead to it: the noise of falling water in the tanks is mixed with the voices of tourists who are launching the famous “dime’s return to Rome.”

Inaugurated in 19 a. C. the Trevi Fountain was conceived by M. V. Agrippa and it is a unique example of ancient Roman aqueducts which always worked sincethe time of Augustus up to the present day. Its name is probably due to the presence of the intersection of three roads or triple water junction.

In 1453 Pope Nicholas V started the aqueduct restoration work following the plans of Leon Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellini, architects of the Virgin waters. The name of the Virgin Water, according to legend, would have been given by Agrippa in memory of a young girl (virgo) that would have  indicated the place of the springs to the soldiers who were looking for it. The architects built a design  of the fountain decorated with coats of arms of the Pope and  Roman people, under which the water emitted by three streams, gathered in a rectangular basin.

In 1640 Urbano VIII Barberini decided that the fountain had to change orientation and entrusted the project to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The construction work, however, were limited to the installation of a base with a tank in front of which there were  three pipe unions. In 1732 Clemente XII Corsini organized a competition for the adjustment of the Trevi Fountain in which took  part the most important artists of the time. Among the projects of the architect  Nicola Salvi, the Pope preferred  the more monumental . Salvi with great competence and professionalism was in charge for the construction work from 1732 until 1752, the year of his death, with his good friend Luigi Vanvitelli.

The central part of the Trevi Fountain façade is developed as a triumphal arch, with a deep niche and Corinthian columns. At the center there is a large inscription that recalls the construction of the fountain commissioned by Pope Clemente XII whose portrait is at the top. Four big statues of 1735 adorn the building itself and symbolize, from left, the fruits of Abundance by  Agostino Corsini, the Fields  Fertility by Bernardo Ludovisi, the Autumn  Gifts of Francesco Queirolo and Amenity of fields by Bartolomeo Pincellotti.

In the large central niche there is a huge statue of Ocean that is driving a large shell-shaped chariot, pulled by two winged sea horses, one angry and the other one peaceful, conducted by one young  triton  and one  mature symbolizing the different features of nature and man’s age.

The sides of the large niche exhibit statues of Healthiness and Abundance by Filippo Della Valle, and the reliefs depicting the Virgin showing the source by the soldiers of Grossi, and Agrippa agree that the construction of the aqueduct of Bergondi. The official opening of the Trevi Fountain was on May 22 of 1762.

The beautiful and surprising bath in the Trevi Fountain of Anita Ekberg with an  evening dress in the movie “La Dolce Vita” made it famous worldwide. But how could we forget Toto in the movie Tototruffa who tries to sell it to a tourist? Each year the City of Rome earn from these coins about 600 thousand Euros, for Caritas Solidarity projects.