In most instances, obnoxious tourists are rightfully ignored. However, a video recently uploaded to Storyful that shows a woman traipsing along the stones of the Trevi Fountain in Rome has been grabbing headlines everywhere, from Food and Wine to ABC News.
The video, taken on July 18 by fellow tourist Lex Jones, shows a woman in a blue shirt, blue cap, and white capri pants standing on the stones roughly five feet into the fountain. The woman is holding on to one of the large stones at the rear of the fountain to hold her balance, and she can be seen filling up a bottle with water trickling down from the apex of the fountain.
Suddenly, from off camera, a whistle is heard. A yellow vested security guard walks toward the woman, who has made her way back across the rocks and hopped back tiled ground around the fountain. The guard again blows her whistle, and at first the tourist doesn’t seem to understand she’s done anything wrong.
The two being to speak, and the tourist appears to be confused. The video ends with the woman following the guard up the stairs, away from the fountain. Interestingly, the whole situation could have been avoided had the thirsty tourist looked on the opposite side of the Trevi Fountain, where there is a rectangular water basin known as the “fountain of lovers,” which is continuously filled by two spouts.
“There were signs all over saying that’s not allowed,” Jones wrote on the Storyful website. “I was just like, wow, this is crazy so I started videoing it.” She added that the tourist “kept trying to explain her side and didn’t really understand why she was in trouble.”
It’s unclear if the tourist was fined or in some other way reprimanded.
The fountain’s water comes directly from the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct that dates back to 19 BCE and is the only ancient Roman aqueduct still in use today.
While ancient once Romans enjoyed clean spring water from Aqua Virgo, drinking from the fountain may not be the best idea. According to Rome Experience, 80,000 cubic meters of water produced by the fountain each day “is recycled and just for show, so don’t be tempted to drink it.”
The fountain, which was built in the architect Nicola Salvi and completed after Salvi’s death in 1762, is one of Rome’s most recognizable landmarks. The 1954 rom-com Three Coins in the Fountain is said to have started the tradition of throwing coins in the fountain for luck, but it’s possible that La Dolce Vita, the famed Federico Fellini film 1960 in which Anita Ekberg takes a walk in the fountain, may have spurred this stunt.
Since 2006, the coins, which often add up to €3,000 per day, are taken by a Roman Catholic charity and used to fund food and social programs. The wealth under the water has often been targeted by thieves, one of whom, who goes by the nickname “D’Artagnan,” was arrested in 2002 and reportedly took up to €1,000 a day from the fountain for over 34 years, according to the BBC.