Rome's most celebrated public space now costs €2 for admission
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Trevi fountain in the Italian capital has been overrun by tourists for many years, and now the Roman authorities are seeking to impose some order. But top Rome cultural guide James Hill is unimpressed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. |
| 0:07.0 | Can you believe I'm back at Waterloo, on the move with another travel high flyer. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm speaking to James Hill, who is a friend of the podcast, cultural tour guide, and I want to talk about Italy, |
| 0:25.5 | and in particular, Rome, James, because you're going to be paying a couple of euros to visit |
| 0:31.1 | the Trevi Fountain. The Treby Fountain is a pilot scheme, really, that is being being attempted where you will have to pay a few euros, |
| 0:40.9 | where in order to get access down to the little rim where you throw your coin in, you will have to pay this fee. |
| 0:48.7 | We hope this isn't a harbinger of future projects to charge you for walking through what is essentially a public square |
| 0:56.1 | in the wide open. What the authorities in Rome say is that we're overwhelmed in some places by |
| 1:01.9 | tourists to allow people to enjoy this masterpiece of sculpture. Then a really good way to do that |
| 1:09.7 | is to have a system whereby people are paying |
| 1:12.6 | that will perhaps reduce a number of people that will also allow us to give a quality experience. |
| 1:18.0 | But rather than, I think, encouraging people to stay away, they'll just reluctantly |
| 1:22.5 | be paying just a couple of pounds to throw their coin in a close proximity rather than lob the coin from a significant |
| 1:30.3 | distance. |
| 1:31.3 | And why is the Trevi Fountains such a tourist call? |
| 1:34.3 | Well, it's a beautiful work of art. It's an 18th century celebration of the delivery of a fairly significant public utility to the city of Rome. |
| 1:45.5 | And water is a utility, of course, quite a topical subject here in the UK. |
| 1:51.3 | But of course, in those days, water was carried to what was a very popular district for the city. |
| 1:56.9 | As one does, you build a terrific celebration of this new water source, fresh drinking water, |
| 2:05.4 | to this populous district, where people just come and fill up their tea kettles, |
| 2:10.0 | the grandi English tourists at the Grand Tourists at the Grand Tour, |
| 2:12.8 | baking their tea with Trevi water, and of course the locals putting their toes into call down in the summer. Of course the origin of the Trevi story |
... |
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