Trevi Fountain

About three thousand euros in coins are thrown into this fountain every single day. That is roughly 1.5 million euros per year, and every last cent of it goes to Caritas, a Catholic charity that uses the money to run a supermarket for Rome's poor. Workers from the city vacuum the coins out every Monday night. In 2016, the city government briefly tried to redirect the funds to its own budget and the resulting public outcry was so fierce they backed down within days.

The tradition of throwing a coin over your left shoulder with your right hand supposedly guarantees you will return to Rome. Two coins means you will fall in love with a Roman. Three coins means you will marry them. This custom only dates to the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain — before that, visitors drank the water. The fountain is fed by the Aqua Virgo aqueduct, originally built by Marcus Agrippa in 19 BC to supply his baths. The name Virgo comes from a legend about a young girl who showed thirsty Roman soldiers the water source.

The fountain was designed by Nicola Salvi and took thirty years to build, from 1732 to 1762. Salvi did not live to see it finished — he died in 1751, possibly from illness contracted working in the damp conditions of the construction site. The central figure is Neptune, riding a shell chariot pulled by two sea horses guided by tritons. One horse is calm and one is wild, representing the two moods of the sea.

Anita Ekberg's midnight swim scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita turned this into the most famous fountain in cinema history. The scene was filmed in February and Ekberg, a former Miss Sweden, waded in without complaint. Marcello Mastroianni, her co-star, needed a wetsuit under his clothes and fortified himself with vodka. The fountain is only about sixty-five centimetres deep, which somehow makes the whole thing even more impressive on film.