You’re outta luck.
Tourists headed to Rome’s Trevi Fountain in hopes of tossing the normal coins, brace yourselves — the beloved historic site has been shut down for construction work.
In the meanwhile, unwitting visitors will find the traditional water feature — said to typically absorb greater than $3,200 per day, in accordance with officials — replaced by a utilitarian, temporary wishing well that one critic suggested offered all of the charm of a ‘municipal swimming pool.’
The water was drained and the scenic site was roped off last month for refurbishment work — a step toward the plan to charge the positioning’s roughly 4 million annual visitors a fee to stand up close and private with the bucket list location.
“We have now to avoid, especially in a fragile art city like Rome, that too many tourists damage the tourist experience, and damage the town,’’ tourism official Alessandro Onorato told the AP, explaining the necessity for the planned fee of about $2.
“We’d like to safeguard two things, that tourists don’t experience chaos and that residents can proceed to live in the middle,” he said.
Visitors are currently capable of crowd onto an elevated walkway running above the positioning, before tossing coins within the temporary pool.
Once work is accomplished, timed reservations will reportedly be required for the most effective viewing areas.
This is able to be the primary try and regulate the world for the reason that fountain was inbuilt 1732, according to The Sun.
Social media lit up with criticism of the sudden switcheroo — with one renaming the fountain the “Trevi swimming pool,” The Guardian reported.
“Imagine in the event you’d flown 14 hours to see the Trevi fountain and as a substitute discover a municipal swimming pool,” one other critic tsked.
The change comes as a number of popular Mediterranean destinations consider ways to combat overtourism, which has turn out to be a hot-button issue in Spain, Italy, Greece and elsewhere in recent times.
Cruisers stopping off in Mykonos and Santorini, for instance, could soon be subject to a $22 visitor’s tax, if officials have their way, it was reported.
