detours
Flip a coin over your left shoulder into the Trevi Fountain in Rome and the die is cast. You are now, according to legend, guaranteed to return to the Eternal City one day. Whatever you do, after enacting the ritual - as just about everyone who visits the fountain does - remember to turn around again. After all, the Trevi has a touch more glamour than your average wishing well.
Built on the back of an ancient aristocrat's palace called the Poli, the Baroque marble marvel sprawls like a banquet and is Rome's largest fountain. At its heart looms a statue of Neptune flanked by the figures of Abundance and Health. Their influence shows: the sea god has abs like Mr Universe, a huge chest and a lush beard. A pair of winged horses drags the shell on which he stands like a chariot. One horse is rearing, the other looks calm and focused - a nod to the sea's two-faced nature, they say.
If you sized up every statue the fountain contains, you could probably build a myth to compete with the Labours of Hercules. Dip into the Trevi's history and you find a riddle. Is its name the result of three roads - tre vie - once supposedly converging in the area? Or does it come from Trivia, the virgin who exposed a spring at the site in 19BC?
Either way, to capitalise on the spring an aqueduct was built and it serviced Rome for more than four centuries. Enter those thugs so well portrayed in Gladiator: the Goths. They smashed Rome's aqueducts, obliging everyone to rely on stinking wells and the water of the Tiber, which doubled as a sewer. Then came the Renaissance. The aqueduct was patched, paving the way for two doomed fountains before, in 1730, Pope Clement XII organised a contest to design a new one.
Sculptor Nicola Salvi won - and thanks to the theatrical grandeur of his vision, the Trevi's rumbling waters have become a magnet for travellers, culture vultures and scooter dudes, its fame amplified by its cameo role in the 1960 Fellini flick La Dolce Vita. Perhaps influenced by the spirit of the illustrious virgin, the Trevi sabotages a night-time dip by Swedish nymph Anita Ekberg and Latin lover Marcello Mastroianni - by cutting out and leaving them stranded. Resist the temptation to see whether the Trevi will rain its favours on you, and don't drink the water because it's laced with anti-fungals and other agents that apparently strip the grime from the coins that are meant to go to charity.
But recently, the Trevi's reputation has been sullied. In 2002, it emerged that the police had arrested a man calling himself D'Artagnan who'd spent 34 years raiding the fountain for change, netting up to Euro1,000 (HK$9,400) a day in dawn raids. According to the BBC, despite being banned, D'Artagnan returned to the fountain and operatically slashed his belly with a blade as a form of protest. Apparently inspired by his example, other coin thieves sprang up like algae.
In a comment worthy of the historian Tacitus, police chief Massimo Improta said: 'It was as if they went into a church and emptied the collection box.'
Advertisers have also exploited the Trevi. Last year, cafe owners complained that their buildings had been festooned with scaffolding and advertising banners for more than two years - long after restoration work on the fountain had finished. The day after the story broke, the scaffolding disappeared. Now, the fountain is more or less pristine.
If you want to visit, it's free 24 hours a day. But take a grubby coin anyway.
