The €2 Trevi Fountain Fee: One Official Month of Results, Then Silence

The ticket counts a different thing from the trial year

Rome did not go straight from an open fountain to a ticket. The fountain reopened on 22 December 2024 after maintenance work that began on 7 October 2024, according to Open (23 December 2024) and Il Fatto Quotidiano (22 December 2024). For the following year, access to the area by the water was capped at 400 people at a time from 9:00 to 21:00, with no cap after 21:00. Entry was free throughout.

The city monitored flows during that trial. Its notice of 28 January 2026 says the year from December 2024 to December 2025 produced "more than 10 million visitors, with about 30,000 entries a day and peaks of 70,000" (our translation). The city did not publish how it counted. Other figures for the same period disagree. ANSA, reporting the announcement on 19 December 2025, gave about 9 million visitors in the past year, alongside about 30,000 a day. Those two figures do not agree: 9 million a year is about 24,700 a day, by our calculation. Radio Roma (14 April 2026) and Funweek (15 April 2026) gave about 11 million in 2024, with no source. AGI, citing Corriere della Sera on 16 December 2025, reported more than 5 million visits to the square in the first half of 2025.

The ticket measures something narrower. It counts each person who passes the gate into what the city calls the inner perimeter of the monument, the area by the basin. A person who looks at the fountain from the piazza is not counted. Neither is someone who walks through the square, or anyone who comes after 22:00, when the fence opens to everyone for free.

In February 2026 those gate entries averaged 8,211 a day, by our calculation. Set beside 30,000 a day, that number seems to show most visitors staying away. That reading is wrong. The two series count different people in different ways, and a single winter month cannot stand for a whole year. The trial-year average also mixes every season and includes days that reached 70,000.

What the ticket data cannot tell us is how many people now stand in the piazza. The city has published no estimate of total visitors to the square since the ticket began. Without one, nobody can say from the published record whether the crowd around the fountain is smaller, larger or the same.

The official record stops at the end of February

Presale began on 29 January, and charging at the gate began on 2 February 2026. The first day produced two counts. Sky TG24 reported about 3,000 tickets by 11:00, about 2,300 of them bought in advance and about 600 at the site. The city then added a note to its 28 January notice: a first count at 18:00 recorded 5,000 visitors.

The city's only full results release followed on 2 March 2026. It counted 229,896 entries "one exact month" after the start, which Culture Councillor Smeriglio described as the total for the month of February. Of those, 217,597 were full-price tickets, 3,499 were residents of Rome and its metropolitan area, and 8,800 were other free entries. The three groups add up to the total. Revenue was €435,194, exactly 217,597 tickets at €2.

Free entries were 5.3% of the February total, by our calculation. Most were not resident entries. Residents made up 3,499 of the 12,299 free entries, and the rest belonged to the other exempt groups: children, people with disabilities and their companions, licensed guides and holders of the city's museum card.

Smeriglio compared the result with Rome's civic museums. He said February's Trevi entries exceeded the monthly entries to the Capitoline Museums, and that the civic museums together recorded 217,550 entries in January. He also called the numbers "constantly growing" (our translation). The release gave no weekly or daily series to show that growth.

Every later figure comes from the press. On 14 April 2026, Radio Roma reported 577,919 entries from 2 February to 7 April, of which 545,730 paid and 32,189 were free, with revenue of "over 1 million euros" (our translation). At €2 each, 545,730 paid tickets come to €1,091,460, by our calculation. Radio Roma names no source for the counts. It cites the city administration only for commentary on how the ticket fits Rome's museum system. We searched for a city release with these numbers and found none. We treat them as press figures with no named source.

If the press figures are right, entries averaged 8,891 a day over 65 days, and paid entries 8,396, by our calculation. Subtracting the February count leaves about 348,023 entries in the roughly 37 days from 2 March to 7 April, or about 9,406 a day. These are approximate, because the two reports do not share an exact cut-off. The later window also includes Easter, which fell on 5 April 2026.

Nothing official or unofficial has appeared since. A Google News search covering the last six months returned no new Trevi entry or revenue figures after April. Tourism Councillor Onorato spoke about the paid access at a festival in Lucca in October 2026, according to La Nazione (12 October 2026), but gave no numbers. On the evening of 28 October 2026 the official ticket site, fontanaditrevi.roma.it, displayed a maintenance notice.

The revenue promises and the measured run-rate

Three revenue figures circulated before the first ticket was sold. Gualtieri gave about €6.5 million a year at the announcement on 19 December 2025, according to ANSA, which said the estimate drew on data from the free-access trial. Smeriglio and Onorato put it at €6 million to €7 million on 2 February 2026, calling it "a conservative estimate" (our translation), also according to ANSA. Before either, Corriere della Sera had floated as much as €20 million a year, reported by AGI and Il Fatto Quotidiano on 16 December 2025. The city called that earlier plan a working hypothesis. None of these figures came with a published method.

The arithmetic behind them is simple. At €2, €6.5 million needs 3.25 million paid tickets a year, or 8,904 a day, by our calculation. February's paid entries ran at 7,771 a day. Held constant for a year, that would bring in about €5.67 million, by our calculation. The press figures to 7 April run at 8,396 paid entries a day, or about €6.13 million a year on the same basis.

Those run-rates sit below the mayor's figure, though not far below. They also rest on winter and early spring, with Easter at the end. Summer could lift the average. A change in rules or hours could lower it. The trial year's range, from an average of about 30,000 visits a day to peaks of 70,000, shows how much a single day can vary. An annual total built from February and March is unreliable in either direction, and we do not offer one as a forecast.

The €20 million figure is a different matter. It would need 10 million paid tickets a year, by our calculation. That is the city's entire trial-year visitor estimate paying at the gate, with no residents, no children and no one watching from the piazza. In February, about one entry in twenty was free, and the ticket covers only the basin area. Nothing in the published record supports €20 million.

Only the city can settle the question, by publishing its monthly counts. It counts every entry at the gate, as its February release shows, so the data exists.

What the €2 buys: the rule itself

The ticket was announced on 19 December 2025 at a press conference at the Capitoline Museums. ANSA reported a start date of 1 February. The start was later set for 2 February 2026. The legal basis appears to be the Giunta Capitolina deliberation the city filed as no. 492 of 19 December 2025, a 71-page document whose tariff list mentions the fountain. We could see the file title but could not read its text.

The rules below come from Roma Capitale's notice of 28 January 2026. The €2 charge applies to tourists and non-residents who enter the inner perimeter of the monument. It applies on the first Sunday of the month too. On Mondays and Fridays the ticketed hours run from 11:30 to 22:00. On other days they run from 9:00 to 22:00. Last entry is at 21:00, and the city says hours may change for maintenance or special events.

Entry is free for residents of Rome and its metropolitan area with ID, people with disabilities and a companion, children under 6 and licensed tourist guides with a valid badge. The official ticket site also lists holders of a valid Roma MIC Card. After 22:00 the fountain is open to everyone without charge.

Tickets are sold online at fontanaditrevi.roma.it, at the city's civic museums, at Tourist Info Points and at partner outlets, which take cash or card. At the entrance itself, only cards are accepted. Prepaid tickets carry no date or time, and they cannot be refunded or changed. The queue forms on via della Stamperia, a side street off the square.

To make the system work, the city and the state heritage authority fitted reversible metal fencing around the lower area by the basin. The work was done at night and finished in February.

The city's own tourism portal does not match its notice. Turismo Roma's English page of 30 January 2026 says the fee applies "every day from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m." and exempts children "under 5." The city notice gives different hours on Mondays and Fridays and a limit of under 6. We follow the city notice, which the official ticket site supports on hours. Some national media also got the hours wrong at launch. ANSA (28 January 2026) and Sky TG24 (2 February 2026) wrote that the later opening applied Monday to Friday.

Where the money goes

The city's 2 March release names two uses for the revenue. One is free entry to Rome's civic museums for residents of the city and its metropolitan area. The other is the maintenance and protection of heritage.

The fountain ticket was part of a wider tariff change. Five smaller civic sites began charging non-residents €5 in the same package: Villa di Massenzio, the Museo Napoleonico, the Museo Barracco, the Museo Bilotti and the Museo Canonica. Il Sole 24 Ore, as reported by StrettoWeb, gave a start date of 3 February. ANSA's English service gave 1 February. We could not resolve the conflict.

No accounting of spending has been published. We found no figure for the cost of running the scheme, including staff, fencing and the ticketing contract, and no report of how much has gone to the museums or to conservation. Even the trial year's maintenance bill is contested. Open (23 December 2024) put it at €372,000, while Il Fatto Quotidiano (22 December 2024) gave €327,000. Neither named the sponsor.

The coins in the fountain are a separate stream. They go to Caritas, the Catholic charity in Rome, under a memorandum between the city government and the Vicariate signed in 2020 and renewed in December 2021, according to Fanpage (30 December 2021). Tgcom24 reported €1.6 million recovered on 22 January 2024 without making clear which year it covered. We found no total for 2025 or 2026, and no new rule on throwing coins.

How Trevi compares with Italy's other ticketed landmarks

The closest comparison is the Pantheon, a few minutes' walk away. The state began charging €5 on 3 July 2023. In its first five months, to 30 November 2023, it recorded 1,381,018 visitors and €5,257,368 in gross revenue, according to the Ministry of Culture (MiC). In 2024 it had 4,086,947 visitors and €14,712,752. For 2025 the ministry reported about 4.5 million visitors. The price rose to €7 on 1 July 2026, with the extra €2 funding a national culture program. Rome residents still enter free.

Once free and reduced entries are counted, the Pantheon took about €3.60 per visitor in 2024 on a €5 ticket, and the Trevi Fountain about €1.89 per entry in February on a €2 ticket, both by our calculation. Exemptions cost Trevi about 5% of its face price and the Pantheon about 28%, also by our calculation. The difference lies in reporting. MiC publishes annual visitor and revenue figures for state sites in its Top 30 ranking. The Trevi Fountain belongs to the city, outside that series, so its figures exist only when the city releases them.

Venice charges day visitors to its historic center on set days. The fee costs €5 when booked at least four days ahead and €10 later, according to Il Post (18 April 2026), after a first trial year in 2024. In 2026 the fee produced 679,553 vouchers and €5,215,035 in provisional revenue over 60 charged days, according to QDP News (1 August 2026), reporting the city's data. That is 11,326 vouchers a day. The Venice travel guide explains the dates and exemptions. Rome, by contrast, has published one month.

Pompeii chose a cap. Since 15 November 2024, the archaeological park has limited entries to 20,000 a day and issued personal tickets, according to the park. A full ticket to the ancient city costs €20. In 2024 Pompeii had 4,267,233 visitors and €55,291,542 in revenue, according to MiC, most of it before the cap began. Our Naples travel guide covers the trip from the city.

The Colosseum has issued tickets in each visitor's name since 18 October 2023, according to MiC. It recorded 14,733,395 visitors and €101,902,884 in 2024. Its official ticket page lists ticket types but no prices, so we did not check its current price.

Claims that did not check out

We tested the figures that travel sites, news outlets and our own pages have repeated about the ticket. The table lists each claim with the outlet or person who made it and the date. Two rows are corrections to Italy Trip Planner content.

Our own Rome guide said the basin area was ticketed daily from 9:00 to 22:00. We took that from the city's tourism portal, Turismo Roma, which says the same. The city's 28 January notice and the official ticket site both give a later start on Mondays and Fridays. The guide is wrong, and we have flagged it for correction.

The second error sat in our own planning notes. We described 577,919 entries to 7 April as a city figure. It is a press figure from Radio Roma. Some of Radio Roma's figures elsewhere have been unreliable. Its first-month story on 3 March gave €453,000 in revenue against the city's €435,194, which looks like two digits swapped. Its April story listed only residents and MIC Card holders as free entries. The city's rules exempt other groups too, and its February breakdown shows residents were a minority of free entries. That breakdown cannot test the April mix directly. The same article gave Colosseum and Pantheon figures that do not match the ministry's.

The revenue figures in the table are labeled as projections because no one presented them as results. The €6.5 million figure was repeated at launch by the AP, NPR, CNN and Euronews, and it is still the number most readers will meet. It remains a forecast.

Criticism and what nobody has measured

The ticket drew opposition before it began. The consumer group Codacons called it a "shameful tax" on 1 February 2026, according to RomaDailyNews (our translation). Rachele Mussolini, leader of the Forza Italia group on the city council, and the trade association Assoturismo Roma e Lazio also criticized the scheme, according to StrettoWeb in February 2026. Federico Rocca, a Brothers of Italy councillor, asked on 3 February about the staff who check tickets. In il Giornale on 22 February, Brothers of Italy councillors and the CGIL union said those staff earned €4.50 an hour. The operators, Zètema and H501, replied that pay ran from €15.55 to €16.80 an hour gross. We could not resolve the dispute.

City officials describe a clear success. Gualtieri said the numbers showed that protecting the monument and enjoying it fully could go together. "Finally Romans, too, can go back to visiting it without the overcrowding," he said in the 2 March release (our translation). Onorato said the experience was "clearly better than in the past, when only chaos, decay and insecurity reigned" (our translation), and that thousands of Romans had returned without paying or queuing.

These are assertions. The city has published no measurement that would test them. We found no figures for queue length or waiting time at via della Stamperia, crowd density in the piazza, or how long people stay. The city has released no busiest day under the ticket, no split by nationality and no split between online and on-site sales. As noted above, nothing official covers any period after February, and nothing at all covers the period after 7 April.

International attention faded quickly. Coverage by the AP, NPR, CNN, Euronews, The Art Newspaper, CBS and ITV clustered in the first days of February. Wanted in Rome reported the first-month results on 3 March. We found no international follow-up since. Search results for the fee are now led by launch stories and by resale listings. Nobody we found publishes a sourced tracker of the results.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers pay €2 to step down into the fenced area by the basin. The view from the piazza is free at any hour, and after 22:00 the fence opens to everyone. On Mondays and Fridays the ticketed area opens at 11:30, and on other days at 9:00, with last entry at 21:00. Residents of Rome and its metropolitan area, children under 6, people with disabilities and a companion, and licensed guides enter free. Buy online at fontanaditrevi.roma.it or pay by card at the entrance, and remember that prepaid tickets carry no time slot and cannot be refunded. Our Rome travel guide fits the fountain into a day in the historic center, and we have flagged its Trevi details for correction.

Tourism businesses and investors have little to plan with. The city has published one month of counts, from winter, and no monthly series since. The €6.5 million figure is a projection, and February's pace sits below it. Anyone pricing tours, guiding or hospitality around the fountain should treat visitor levels after February as unknown and ask Roma Capitale for its monthly ticket data. The revenue is earmarked for free civic museums for residents and for heritage upkeep, but no spending has been reported.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures with a primary source: 229,896 entries and €435,194 in revenue from 2 February to 1 March 2026; the split of 217,597 full-price, 3,499 resident and 8,800 other free entries; the hours and exemptions in the city's 28 January notice; and the trial-year estimate of more than 10 million visitors, about 30,000 a day and peaks of 70,000, described as an estimate. For comparisons, MiC's figures for the Pantheon, the Colosseum and Pompeii are official. Do not present 577,919 entries to 7 April as a city figure, or the move from 30,000 visits a day to about 8,200 entries a day as a fall in visitors. Do not present €6.5 million, €6 million to €7 million or €20 million as results. Do not repeat the unsourced 11 million visitors in 2024, daily ticketed hours from 9:00 or a paid piazza, and use the city notice's under-6 child exemption rather than Turismo Roma's under 5.