For many a first-time traveler to Rome, a stop at the Trevi Fountain is a must—though not so much to gaze at it. As the superstition goes, if you face away from it and toss a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder, you'll secure yourself a return visit. The New York Times reports determined tourists have continued to carry out the ritual even during the fountain's recent three-month restoration, which the AP reports cost about $340,000 and culminated with a Dec. 22 reopening. During the closure, a small pool encased in a simple plywood box was set up to receive the coins—and there were plenty of them, roughly $63,000 in total over the period. It's Fabrizio Marchioni's job to collect and tally them.
Marchioni has done so for 13 years in his job with the Roman Catholic charity Caritas, which has had all of the fountain's coins donated to it since 2005 (they are the property of Rome's municipal administration). They're sucked up two times each week, then weighed under police watch before Marchioni brings them to Caritas offices, where Marchioni and his team of volunteers weed out small non-coin items ranging from guitar picks to shells to rings. The coins are washed, and dried in a bespoke machine that separates euro and non-euro coins, with the foreign coins then sent to an exchange company. The money is then used for charitable causes. The 2023 tally? Nearly 2 million euros, from what the BBC reports are the roughly 10,000 tourists who visited it per day. (More Rome stories.)
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