Putting a fee on the Trevi Fountain: a dystopian, grotesque and wrong idea, here's why

According to Rome’s tourism councilor, Alessandro Onorato, visiting the Trevi Fountain should be an “experience,” whatever that means: his word, he said so in a video he posted on his Instagram profile. Now, it is not important to investigate what the meaning of this new, ridiculous anglicism is: it is important to understand that, for anyone coming from outside Rome, this “experience,” in the more or less near future, will have to be paid for. The alderman has already outlined the plan: access to the square, he says, will be free, but anyone wishing to descend into the fountain basin will have to book their place via the Internet, choose the time slot in which they presume to go to see the Trevi Fountain, and pay a ticket that will cost two euros or so.

The measure, according to the alderman’s beliefs, will have several beneficial effects: he says “greater protection for the asset,” and then long mailing lists of tourists who will sign up on the portal for reservations, and even a “more sustainable tourism because you will no longer be able to enter the basin with food and ice cream but this will be consumed outside the monument.” What does the alderman mean by “greater protection”? Investing in polishing the surfaces of a monument that was, moreover, already renovated nine years ago, with two million euros provided by a private individual? No: more trivially, he explains in another video, for him “greater protection” means preventing the actions of “various mythomaniacs who dive in believing themselves to be perhaps Mastroianni.” The alderman was probably not the least bit touched by the idea that a paying tourist might still be tempted by the urge to swim in the fountain, and if that is the intention it will certainly not be a two euro obolus that will hold him back. Nor has he probably been touched by the idea that the tourist armed with chips purchased from the well-known fast food restaurant fifty meters from the Trevi Fountain (this is the example Onorato gives) will not decide to change his eating habits just because the alderman forces him to pay two euros to see the monument up close: he will simply chew and crumble on the cobblestones of the square instead of on the travertine steps of the Fountain. If this is his idea of protection, news can be given to the alderman: in order to protect the monument and make tourism more sustainable in accordance with his concepts of protection and sustainability, all it takes is a few more policemen.

Because if this is the point, putting a fee on the entrance to the Trevi Fountain will not serve to ensure greater protection, nor will it make the capital’s tourist flows more sustainable. If today ten thousand people go to the fountain every day who pay nothing, tomorrow there will be ten thousand who will pay two euros. Or, perhaps even better, a part of these ten thousand will pay two euros, and the others will crowd the square, so as to make the passage even more complicated and annoying. The masses crossing the square will not know the slightest change after a two-euro ticket will be paid to enter the basin of the Fountain. It is simply a dystopian idea that wants to dictate to the traveler, the citizen and more generally to the passerby the rhythms with which to enjoy the fountain, rummaging in their pockets and also putting a certain hurry on them. It is a blow dealt to the flâneur or, more trivially, to anyone who wants to get around Rome without the demented and frenzied anxiety of having to plan his or her walk minute by minute (since the phenomenal thinking should require anyone who wants to see the Trevi Fountain up close to know well in advance what time he or she will pass by it). It is a bad idea because it erases the primary function of the Trevi Fountain, that of being a still-living part of a city, to turn it into a caged tourist attraction. It is a grotesque stunt that kills any surprise and any emotion, and that has no other purpose than to turn Rome’s most famous monument that still remains free, still untouched by the tourism policies of those who, more or less unconsciously, consider the historic centers of our cities as great theme parks, into an ATM. Putting the Trevi Fountain on a fee means taking one more step toward the complete transformation of Rome into a Disneyland of antiquity, into an amusement park where monuments are no longer traces of its history, pieces of collective memory, heritage that belongs to all those who admire them, but become more trivially rides, attractions, sets for self-shots to be posted on social networks.

If one really has to pay to see the Trevi Fountain from the reservoir, then the bluntness of Tourism Minister Daniela Santanchè is more appreciable, devoid of any qualms in declaring that “we have to put our riches to income, so it is fine to charge and create a mechanism of reservation, and not of closed numbers.” It may be a crude, old-fashioned and outdated view of cultural heritage, but at least it comes across unvarnished. Why talk out of turn about preservation and sustainability when the only plausible end of this thinking is to put one of the world’s most famous monuments to income? The Capitoline administration’s idea is the quintessential commodification of cultural heritage: asking all (or rather, almost all: the Romans, kind concession, will be excluded from the obolus, but they will still have to submit to the reservation) to pay to see a public monument, which until today is, as indeed it is normal that it should be, of free access and in front of which anyone can stop as much as he wants, without having the hassle of a hostess or a steward who, when the time is up, invite him to get out of the way.

“We are thinking about how to operationalize the proposal,” the alderman says in the video. There is only one way to operationalize it: prevent it from materializing. Leave everything as it is. Let the Trevi Fountain remain a public monument with free access. Of course, supporters of the proposal will then wonder what the appropriate countermeasures should be to manage the flows through the square. There is no countermeasure: flows cannot be managed once they arrive in front of the fountain, unless you want to close the square, an even more dystopian and impractical measure. The only way to manage flows is to act further upstream. In Barcelona, for example, they have begun to address the problem by deciding not to renew short-term rental licenses, with the aim of mitigating at least some of the effects of mass tourism. In the Italian city that, in the last year, has experienced the most conspicuous increase in short rentals (and in 2025, the year of the Jubilee, the situation will surely not improve), perhaps we need to start thinking about tourism policies in a slightly more thoughtful way.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.