AA-2026-623B44
On the image
The Trevi Fountain had been drawing visitors to the Piazza di Trevi since its completion in 1762, but it was in the postwar 1950s that it became something closer to a pilgrimage site for Americans discovering Europe on the new transatlantic flights, armed with Kodachrome and a coin. Nicola Salvi's rearing horses and the triumphal figure of Neptune commandeer an entire palace wall behind them, a piece of theatrical urban design so outsized it makes the square feel like a stage set built for an audience that never quite arrives. The photographer has moved in close enough to cut the tourist crowd entirely, which was either very deliberate or simply good timing in an era before the fountain had been cordoned off and the surrounding piazza turned into a managed queue. What they captured instead was the fountain doing what it was always meant to do — looking inexhaustible, permanent, and faintly absurd in its magnificence — blissfully unaware that within a few years La Dolce Vita would make throwing a coin into it a globally mandatory act and complete the transformation of a baroque water feature into the world's most elaborate wishing well.
Visually related — by likeness
Trevi Fountain, Rome, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-623B44. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/trevi-fountain-rome-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026623B44,
title = {Trevi Fountain, Rome, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-623B44},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/trevi-fountain-rome-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Trevi Fountain, Rome, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-623B44 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/trevi-fountain-rome-1950s ER -
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