It has created confusion across Rome for weeks, but now it seems the row over who will receive coins thrown by tourists into the famous Trevi Fountain has been settled.
The row broke out last month after Italian charity Caritas was told it would no longer receive the coins that tourists throw over their shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, which is nearly 300 years old and visited by millions of people each year.
The coin-throwing ritual into the 18th-century masterpiece was is said to guarantee the return of person who did the tossing to Rome, and was made famous by the film Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). The Trevi Fountain also featured in 1960 movie La Dolce Vita.
The money thrown into the famous fountain has been donated to Caritas since 2001, and brings in approximately $2.4 million to the Catholic Church-run charity each year.
It was reported in December that Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi had controversially proposed for the coins collected in the Trevi Fountain to go towards fixing the city’s infrastructure, drawing shock and criticism from Caritas director Father Benoni Ambarus.
However, Raggi appears to have backflipped on the proposal, labelling it as a misunderstanding.
Instead of having Caritas volunteers sort and count the coins, Rome has handed those duties over to the utility responsible for cleaning and maintaining the fountain in order to increase transparency, according to the Catholic News Service.
Furthermore, Raggi told the Vatican newspaper that Caritas would not only receive money thrown in the Trevi Fountain, but any of the city’s other historic water features.
