Rome’s baroque Trevi Fountain opened Saturday morning with selfie-takers lining a newly installed metal walkway, as workers start the painstaking process of carefully cleaning the 18th-century masterpiece.
The walkway, made of building scaffolding and covered with a vinyl rug, can hold 130 people at a time, giving tourists a chance to get a close look at the statue of Oceanus and his horse-drawn chariot.
But a warning to those visiting the attraction because tossing a coin into the fountain, a long-standing tradition, is now banned. In fact, anyone who does so will face a €50 ($54) fine. Coins are only allowed to be thrown into a small temporary basin between the walkway and the cobblestone square.
The $330,000 cleaning and restoration project will last until December, Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri told CNN in an interview Saturday morning.
The walkway and temporary basin are a necessary step toward finding the delicate balance between conservation and tourism. By studying the busy periods of the day the walkway is used, the city will be able to institute better crowd control.
“The aim is improving the experience of visitors to make a unique experience to admire the fountain and to avoid overcrowding,” he said. “That’s why there is a limit on people that can stay on this walkway. But also after the end of the maintenance work, there will be a cap on the number of people that can be inside the fountain area to admire it.”
From the raised walkway, the detail of the 18th-century sculpture is breathtaking. But from this vantage point, one also sees millions of dents in the stone ridge on the edge of the fountain from flying coins.
Also visible are thousands of round rust marks from the coins sitting in the water. Every year, more than €1.5 million ($1.6 million) in change is removed from the fountain and given to the Catholic charity Caritas, but the projectiles have taken a toll on the monument.
Once the fountain is back to normal and filled with water, Gualtieri said the city would like to eventually introduce a ticketing system to help limit the crowds. He said that will also make the experience better for tourists, many of whom seem happy to pay the price.
American tourist Arlene Speling, from Florida, was waiting in line when the walkway opened for the first time. She expressed doubt over whether the possible new measures would help with crowd control. “I think everyone would pay €2 to come. If you’re traveling here, it’s one of the staples of Rome, right?” she told CNN.
The restoration is one of dozens of projects going on in the Eternal City ahead of the Vatican’s Holy Jubilee of 2025, when the city is expecting millions of additional visitors.
The fountain was last repaired and cleaned in 2014, a job that took more than a year. The mayor has promised that the Trevi Fountain will be ready in just five weeks this time.
“We are working very hard to be ready for Jubilee and all the construction sites that are supposed to be finished by December would be finished by December,” he said.
