The Only Thing You Can Count On Is Change; The Roman Version

You’ll Have To Pay To See Trevi

We love Italy and especially Rome but each time we return it’s like culture shock. Individually and together we’ve been to Rome dozens of times with my first visit being in July 1965. On that visit the Coliseum sat in the middle of a frantic traffic circle and it had no fencing or admission charge or even a gate. Saint Peters only had crowds on Sunday for the Pope’s blessing and you just walked in. Trevi Fountain was at a small intersection with maybe a hundred visitors mostly throwing coins over their shoulder into the fountain, but things change.

The problem isn’t caused by Rome’s officials, but by Rome just being Rome. Over the past twenty years alone the number of visitors in Summer have increased eight fold. On our most recent visit about a year ago you had to buy tickets to visit the Coliseum, lines to get into Saint Peters had a two hour wait and chances were you couldn’t even get near Trevi. Most of the changes were necessary and every year you can expect more:

Starting in February, 2026 you will have to pay a US$2.35 entrance fee if you want to enter the square of the famed Trevi Fountain in Rome.

While the coins tossed into the fountain are donated to charity, the new fees collected will go to the city authority to pay for upkeep and crowd control. The city expects to raise €6,500,000 a year from the new fees from the fountain alone. 2026’s new fee system for certain museums and monuments for tourists and non-residents will include the Trevi Fountain and five other attractions including the Napoleonic Museum. Children under the age of five, and those with disabilities and an accompanying person, will be exempt from the fees.

Trevi History
One of Rome’s most iconic landmarks the Trevi Fountain was built between 1732 and 1762 and designed by Nicola Salvi, with Giuseppe Pannini completing the Baroque masterpiece after Salvi’s death, officially opening in 1762 under Pope Clement XIII.

People started throwing coins in the Trevi Fountain after the movie Three Coins in the Fountain, which claimed to follow the ancient Roman ritual of tossing one coin for a return to Rome, two for love, and three for marriage.

Coins from Rome’s Trevi Fountain started going to the Catholic charity Caritas Italiana in 2001, a practice initiated to support the city’s poor, funding soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and despite some debate in 2019, the practice of donating the coins to charity has continued.

Before the official system coin collection in 2001, anyone could take coins from the Trevi Fountain, but the most famous “person” who regularly collected them was Roberto Cercelletta, nicknamed “D’Artagnan,” who fished coins out of the fountain for decades (from 1968 until 2002) to support himself, facing many fines but becoming a notorious figure.