Drunk And Throwing Himself Into Trevi Fountain In Rome, Foreign Tourists Fined And Banned For Life

Tourists packed Trevi Fountain. (Wikimedia Commons/DAVID ILIFF/License CC BY SA 3.0)

JAKARTA - Foreign tourists were fined and subject to a life ban by local authorities, as a result of getting drunk and throwing himself into a historic fountain in Rome, Italy.

The bad-behaved tourist season seems to have started earlier in the Italian capital, when three foreign tourists from New Zealand got into trouble long before summer sunlight could be blamed for their excessive behavior last month.

The three were stopped as they began to navigate the famous Trevi Fountain in downtown Rome, which is often a source of trouble as peak season crowds begin to gather in the city.

As they were escorted away from the area, one of the tourists, a 30-year-old man, grappled with police and jumped into the fountain as authorities chased him, a spokesman for the Rome Capital Police told CNN.

"Alcohol is clearly involved," the spokesman added, quoted from CNN, March 27.

He was fined 500 euros (IDR 8,968,050) and banned from visiting the Barok-style historic building for life.

The New Zealander passed through the controlled area and entered the fountain by climbing a marble statue lined up in the basin.

It is known, Trevi Fountain, which was built in 1762 as a waterway estuary, underwent a cleaning of $330,000 by 2024, in which the fountain was dried so that workers could repair the marble unfolded due to millions of coins thrown into the water each year.

Soaking in this fountain has been an aspiration for many tourists, inspired by the 1960 film Federico Fellini "La Dolce Vita," where Anita Ekberg enters the water in a night dress.

About a dozen tourists were fined for dipping everything from toe to water bottles into the fountain every year, according to Roma police.

In addition, the more people who intend to steal are thwarted for trying to steal part of the 1.5 million euros worth of coins thrown into the water every year. The money, donated to charity, is collected every day.

In 2024, the city introduced a system to limit the number of visitors in front of the fountain to 400 people at one time. The access area is open from 9 am to 9 pm every day and the city is considering charging a little entrance fee.