Officials in Rome are mulling whether to limit access to the Trevi fountain, as the city grapples with the impact that overtourism is having on the late baroque masterpiece.
The plans under consideration include having people reserve in advance to visit the monument. “Personally I would be in favour of looking at a new form of access, limited and timed, to the Trevi fountain,” Alessandro Onorato, the city councillor responsible for tourism, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Access to the fountain would most likely be free for residents while everyone else would be asked to make a “symbolic” contribution of one or two euros, he said.
The aim would not be to raise money, he said, but to better control the masses who descend daily on the monument, curbing behaviours such as loitering and snacking on pizza or gelato in a place that “deserves respect”, he said.
On Wednesday, Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, said measures to curb tourist numbers were “a very concrete possibility”.
The city was looking at a handful of possible solutions, he told reporters. “We’ve decided to study and investigate this because the situation is becoming technically very difficult to manage,” he said. “Local police officers tell us this all the time: there is a concentration of people that makes adequate protection of the monument difficult and is also often a source of degradation.”
The Trevi fountain has become the latest flashpoint as officials across Europe wrestle with the impacts of overtourism. In Greece, authorities have implemented a time-slot system for the Acropolis to ease congestion at the Athens site, echoing a strategy already in place at Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica. In Venice, long the continent’s dominant symbol of overtourism, local authorities have experimented with an entry charge for visitors.
The conversation in Rome has taken on renewed importance as the Eternal City gears up for the 2025 jubilee, a year-long Roman Catholic event that is expected to draw more than 30 million tourists and pilgrims to the city.
Officials in the city have long had to intervene to protect the Trevi fountain from tourists. In 2017 it began imposing fines for bad behaviour at the site, including a crackdown on those who seek to frolic in the water in hopes of recreating Anita Ekberg’s scene from La Dolce Vita.
In 2018 an eight-person brawl broke out at the fountain amid a scramble for the perfect selfie spot.