As anyone who’s ever been a tourist in Rome can tell you, the Trevi Fountain is a tourist magnet. Each year, tourists make their wishes and collectively toss about $1.7M dollars worth of change into it. I’m actually amazed that tourists can get close enough to it to land their change in the drink. If you try to get near the Fountain on a weekend evening, well, it’s a mob scene. You’ve got to have a pretty good arm to get your coins in there. On the other hand, if millions of tourists check out the Trevi annually, and all they toss in is $1.7M, maybe most of the coin tosses miss. Surely, millions of tourists can do better than $1.7M.
Anyway, seven years ago, when I was last in Rome – which makes it sounds like I frequent the Eternal City; I’ve been there three times – I had my nieces in tow. During our time there, we beat a couple of paths to the Trevi Fountain. (The apartment we had for the week was just off the Spanish steps, a few minutes walk away.) Frankly, it was exciting to see the crowds there. And, of course, the very best thing about Rome is turning a corner and coming across yet another ornate fountain or church, or – better yet – something built 2,000 years ago (even if it’s in partial ruin). I think we managed to scoot the girls through the crowd to toss some small change in the water.
The Trevi fountain has been in the news of late because, after letting Caritas, a Catholic charity that works with the poor and homeless, keep the change for years, the City of Rome started wishing for some of that money for themselves.
Reversing a practice that started in 2001, [Rome’s Mayor Virginia] Raggi decided that the loose change retrieved from the fountain will be spent in maintaining Rome's cultural assets and infrastructure. (Source: Al Jazeera)
I’m all in favor of “maintaining Rome’s cultural assets and infrastructure,” but sucking the money out of the coffers of a charity that works with the poor and homeless seems like a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The new deal was supposed to go into effect on April 1st. This head’s up gave Caritas time to jump into some Catholic action, using social media and their cadre of 5,000 volunteers, to put pressure on Raggi and Rome’s city council.
There was, of course, some pushback in the other direction. There’s a pretty strong streak of anti-clericalism in Italy.
The latest decision has evoked mixed reactions, with many also questioning why the church should have exclusive rights over the money.
On the other hand, it was Pope Clement XII who commissioned the Trevi Fountain, so I guess the Church has some historic claim to it.
After a few weeks of “confusion and consternation,” Mayor Raggi backed off.
In fact, Caritas will be getting the loot from the Trevi, and from any other Roman fountains where people toss coins.
Mayor Raggi now says that:
…it was all a misunderstanding. The city needs to ensure an accurate count of the money, so instead of having Caritas volunteers sort and count the coins, the city will entrust that to ACEA, the city utility responsible for cleaning and maintaining the famous fountain…
ACEA counting the money will bring "order and transparency" to the process, she said, and expanding the collection to other fountains will bring more money to Caritas. (Source: NCR Online)
This is a nice enough little face-saver, but is it just me, or isn’t it just as likely that Caritas volunteers can be trusted to collect and count the coins as the ACEA professionals. (If I were Caritas, I might want to request that the ability to put in observers to watch the money counters. But maybe that’s just the Bostonian in me, used to all those stories about guys who collected the change from the city’s parking meters bringing home an extra $100K a year in quarters. When they broke up a ring of these fellows, I remember the wife of one of them quoted as saying she thought nothing about paying for her groceries in quarters, and thought her husband was “just a good provider.” Today, Boston’s meters are no longer coin-op, so these opportunities for a little larceny are gone.)
Looks like Rome will have to get it’s antiquity-preserving funds elsewhere. I hope they can do so, as I’d hate to see this beautiful city of ruins go to ruin. But it’s also important to make sure that the needy are taken care of, and Rome has plenty of them.
Although tossing a coin in the Trevi is supposed to guarantee that you’ll get back to Rome, I don’t know if I’ll ever visit there again. But if I do, I’ll make sure to toss an entire Euro coin in – assuming the Euro still exists – as long as I know it’s going to Caritas.
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A tip of the Pink Slip capello (that’s hat for you non-Italian speakers - which makes it sounds like I speak Italian, which I don’t) to my cousin MB’s partner Dan, who does speak Italian, and who reads the Italian papers online, for pointing this story my way.
Meanwhile, this may be the first time in the history of the blogosphere that Al Jazeera and the National Catholic Reporter are quoted in the same post.
Thank God for the google!
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