The most celebrated fountain in the city, the baroque spectacle around the coin toss, and the art and curiosities tucked into the lanes beside it.
עודכן לאחרונה 23 באוגוסט 2026
In a nutshell: the Trevi Fountain is Rome's baroque showpiece, filling an entire piazza with Oceanus, tritons and seahorses, and its coin toss tradition promises you will one day return. The lanes around it hide an unsung church, a rich art academy and the macabre Cripta dei Cappuccini. The Spanish Steps are minutes away, and the district overview is your starting point.
Without question the city's most celebrated fountain, the Trevi is baroque art at its most exuberant: it fills an entire piazza, teems with statues of deities and marine beasts, and is wrapped in more than its share of odd customs. No trip to Rome feels complete without a look.
Tip: Come back in the evening to see the fountain beautifully illuminated, when the crowds thin and the water glows.
Take in all the details: the exuberant composition is the work of architect Nicola Salvi, whose 1732 design celebrates Oceanus, god of the sea, in his moment of victory. The deity rides a chariot shaped like a shell, drawn by two teams of tritons and seahorses, one calm and one wild, mirroring the ocean's changeable temper. Nor is the water an ordinary supply: it flows from the Aqua Virgo aqueduct, an infrastructure serving the city for over two millennia.
A piece of historical gossip: scan the fountain's right side and you may notice a stone urn that has nothing to do with the marine theme. Rumour says Salvi had it set there to screen out an inquisitive barber, who kept volunteering his unwanted, frequently rude judgements on the building site.
Pop culture pedigree: the fountain is a star with its own filmography. Its most celebrated moment comes in Federico Fellini's 1960 classic La Dolce Vita, when Anita Ekberg's Sylvia splashes through the basin in her ball gown and beckons Marcello Mastroianni's Marcello to follow.
To one-up your fellow travellers in the unsung-church stakes, try the Oratorio del Santissimo Sacramento, built, torn down and rebuilt between the 16th and 18th centuries just a few steps from the Trevi Fountain. Its simple, single aisle is beautifully decorated with 19th-century frescoes that continue onto the ceiling, so be sure to crane your neck for a good look.
The Ecstasy of St Teresa: the main attraction of Santa Maria della Vittoria sits in the fourth chapel along the left wall: the stunning sculpture of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, one of Bernini's most famous works and a true masterpiece of baroque art. A famously charged piece, it shows St Teresa of Ávila lifted skyward on a cloud, floating in ecstasy as a teasing angel pierces her with a golden arrow. A concealed window bathes the composition in natural light, doubled by the gilded bronze rays that represent divine love descending from above. Try to see it in the rich golden light of late afternoon for the best effect.
You do not have to walk far from the Oratorio del Santissimo Sacramento to reach the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (accademiasanluca.it), housed in Palazzo Carpegna in the maze of streets around the Trevi Fountain. The academy boasts a surprisingly rich art collection and fascinating temporary exhibitions, but it is not always open to visitors, so actually getting inside can come down to sheer luck.
If you want something of the unknown genre that leads you away from the crowds while keeping you entertained, start with Galleria Sciarra. A private courtyard not far from the Trevi Fountain, but open for the public to wander through, it is a beautiful piece of Liberty architecture, something not very common in the more baroque Rome. Built in the late 1880s, its main attraction is the fresco running all the way around it, painted by Giuseppe Cellini. In the upper part, a series of female figures embody virtues: strength, humility, patience, amiability. Below, another set of frescoes shows the pastimes of 19th-century ladies, such as elegant conversation, tending the garden and charity work.
If contemporary art is more your thing, head to the Gagosian Gallery (gagosian.com/locations/rome), the Roman branch of Larry Gagosian's art empire. Housed in what used to be a 1920s bank redesigned by architects Firouz Galdo and Caruso St John, it regularly hosts exhibitions featuring the most important names of the contemporary-art world.
The Italian 'Stellone': the Tridente and Trevi are filled with institutional buildings, ministries and government palaces, so you may catch sight of a five-pointed star appearing in emblems and plaques again and again. Popularly known as the Stellone, or 'Great Star', it is one of the most ancient symbols of Italy, marking this piece of land since ancient Greek times: the star represents the planet Venus, which rose in the west, the direction you had to follow to sail from Greece to Italy. The Stellone also appears in Italy's official emblem, inside a cogwheel surrounded by an olive and an oak branch.
If you do not spook easily, or you live for unusual, strange and gothic places, do not miss this crypt a few steps from Piazza Barberini, attached to a museum dedicated to the order of Capuchin friars. It contains the bones of almost 4,000 friars, and everything inside is made of human bone, from the picture frames to the light fittings. According to the Catholic Church the sight is not meant to be morose but a symbol of the passage of time and the brevity of life on Earth: a textbook memento mori. Six smaller chapels open off the crypt, three of them named after the bones used to decorate them: the Crypt of the Skulls, the Crypt of the Pelvises and the Crypt of the Leg Bones and Thigh Bones. Famous visitors stunned by the place include the Marquis de Sade, who called it the most striking thing he had ever seen, and authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain. Guided tours and activities for kids are available, but should be arranged with considerable advance notice.
Official site →Via Rasella: not far from the Gagosian, this minor street connects Via del Traforo to Via delle Quattro Fontane and was the site of one of the most famous partisan actions of World War II. In March 1944 members of the Italian resistance attacked a column of Nazi soldiers returning to occupied Rome after their daily drills. The Nazis retaliated with the terrible massacre of the Ardeatine Caves. The attack took place around the same time the Allies were fighting the Battle of Monte Cassino to reach and liberate Rome, which they managed to do in June 1944.
Stand with your back to the fountain, close your eyes and throw the coin with your right hand over your left shoulder. Legend promises you will return to Rome. Bathing in the basin, by contrast, is strictly forbidden and heavily fined.