Who gets the millions of euros in coins thrown into the Trevi Fountain in Rome?

There’s a good chance that many first-time visitors to Rome’s Trevi Fountain are familiar with the ritual. To guarantee a return to the Eternal City, legend says, one must stand with one’s back to the water and throw a coin with one’s right hand over one’s left shoulder.

The ritual became famous around the world thanks to the 1954 film “The Wishing Fountain”, and the song “Three Coins in the Fountain” — recorded by Frank Sinatra — which won the Oscar for best original song.

Coin tossing is such a popular item on tourist itineraries that even a recent three-month restoration, which cut off direct access to the 18th-century fountain, wasn’t a deterrent. Visitors still gathered in front of the transparent panels that protected the work site to throw coins — around €61,000, or US$63,000 — into a small basin.

“Tourists will flip a coin, they don’t care about the construction or lack of construction,” said Fabrizio Marchioni on a cold December morning, a few days before the fountain’s reopening.

He knows what he’s talking about.

For 13 years, Marchioni’s main job at Caritas, a Roman Catholic charity, has been to collect and count the coins thrown into the fountain.

“These are solidarity coins” as “they are put to good use”, said Giustino Trincia, director of the Caritas branch in Rome. More than 52,800 meals were distributed in Caritas community kitchens in Rome in 2023, just one of the many projects the institution carries out.

The coins are claimed by Rome’s municipal administration, but since 2005, they have been donated to Caritas. The collection in 2023 was close to €2 million.

The fountain’s recent cleaning, 10 years after a major restoration, came in time for the start of the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year on Christmas Eve. With around 32 million visitors expected over the next year, Rome is in a state of intense preparation, with dozens of monuments being cleaned and polished.

The fountain’s temporary closure also allowed city officials to test visitor access controls. Upon reopening just before Christmas, authorities announced that only 400 people at a time would be allowed in the sunken area in front. Visitors will enter at one end and exit at the other side, with monitors keeping watch during daytime hours.

“The objective is to allow everyone to enjoy the fountain to the fullest, without crowding, without confusion,” said Roberto Gualtieri, the mayor of Rome, at the reopening. The city is also considering charging a nominal fee, he added.

Rome has a multitude of fountains — the public and decorative faces of the aqueducts that were originally built by the ancient Romans — but none match the fame of the Trevi Fountain. At the beginning of the 18th century, “a practically unknown architect”, Nicola Salvi, replaced a more modest version of the fountain with the monumental work that reaches almost 35 meters in height, perhaps “the best-known monument in modern Rome”, said Claudio Parisi Presicce, superintendent of cultural heritage in Rome.

Celebrated in a symphony as well as in works of art over the centuries, the fountain became a movie star in the 20th century, most famously in Fellini’s film “The Sweet Life,” where Anita Ekberg called Marcello Mastroianni to join to her as she ventured into its waters (an act that would be highly frowned upon in real life).

New fame came via the 2024 season of the Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” after the protagonist, Emily Cooper, made the fountain one of her first Roman stops.

The ritual of throwing coins began in the late 19th century, when German academics studying in Rome revived an ancient Roman practice of throwing coins into water for luck. This quickly became popular.

Over the decades, the coins—and the people sitting on the fountain’s marble ledge (another major act much frowned upon)—have contributed to its wear and tear, especially as the number of visitors has increased dramatically in recent years.

“These are magnificent and enormous monuments, but very delicate,” said Anna Maria Cerioni, who has overseen many of Rome’s fountains for three decades in her role as head of restoration at the city’s art superintendency.

Minerals in coins often leave marks on the product used to waterproof the basin. Specially developed for the fountain, it is known as “White Trevi”, and periodic maintenance is necessary.

The fountain is still supplied by the Aqua Virgo, built in the 1st century BC and the only one of the 11 aqueducts built by the ancient Romans that remained almost constantly in use, said Marco Tesan, who oversees the maintenance of some of Rome’s fountains and aqueducts for the company. ACEA water and electricity.

Twice a week, company workers use a machine designed for swimming pools to suck coins from the basin. During the maintenance phase, brooms and dustpans were sufficient, “although you still feel tired at the end of the day,” said Luca Tasselli of ACEA.

At the source, the collected coins are weighed under the supervision of city police officers before Marchioni takes them to the Caritas offices. There, they are first washed under running water, then placed on a table covered with towels so that impurities can be removed. Along with other things.

Larger objects usually found at the fountain, such as bottles, umbrellas, fruit and glasses, are removed directly by ACEA workers. Marchioni and the volunteers who help him look for smaller items.

Recently, religious medals, guitar picks, subway tokens, keys, marbles, shells and pins of all shapes and sizes have been found. Bracelets and rings were also common, and Marchioni surmised they might have fallen off during particularly excited launches.

Expensive-looking jewelry is handed over to the police.

As there is no market for coin drying machines, Caritas commissioned a company that makes cutlery drying machines to convert one for its purposes. The coins are dried and then passed through a machine that separates the euro coins from everything else. It’s so sophisticated that it even detected a bunch of fake two-euro coins that were circulating in May and June.

Foreign currencies are sent to a company for exchange, which can be problematic, Marchioni said. “Let’s say throwing euro coins is the best,” he said.

The resources are used for a range of projects, from activities for young people to care programs for people with Alzheimer’s. Primarily, Caritas helps families in need survive, reaching nearly 10,000 people by 2023, said Trincia of Caritas.

He added that he hopes tourists visiting Rome are aware of the good they are doing through the fountain. “Poverty doesn’t take a vacation,” he said.