A new, mandatory two-Euro admission fee for tourists and non-residents of Rome wishing to get up close to the Trevi Fountain began Monday.
The now-active fee was first announced by the Rome Mayor’s office in December. Italian state-owned broadcaster Rai News explained that starting on Monday, February 2, non-residents of Rome and its metropolitan area will have to pay the admission fee if they want to get to the area closest to the fountain.
“The measure is designed to manage tourist flows, which every year bring millions of people into a limited space, creating inconvenience and putting pressure on the heritage site,” Rai News wrote. “The ticket will be symbolic, regulated by specific times and limited admissions to make the visit more orderly and safer.”
Children under the age of six, people with disabilities, and authored tour guides will be exempt from paying the fee, “thus protecting the monument’s everyday character for the city,” according to Rai News.
“The goal is to improve the quality of the experience of enjoying our heritage, combating overcrowding,” Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri reportedly said, citing the need to guarantee resources for the fountain’s maintenance.
“Rome is a World Heritage Site and we want to ensure greater continuity of maintenance, while increasing the accessibility and usability of culture,” he added, stressing that resources obtained from ticket sales will be allocated to a fund dedicated to the “maintenance and decoration” of museums and monuments in the Italian capital.
According to official details from the Mayor’s Office, the fee will be charged on Mondays and Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to 10:00p.m. and the remaining days of the week from 09:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Residents of Rome and its Metropolitan area must present a valid identification to be granted free access to the monument. Advance purchase of the tickets became available online from January 29 onwards.
Authorities also announced that, to “further improve” the effectiveness of the admission fee, work on a new fence has begun to regulate queues, which, according to the Mayor’s Office, will be finished this month.
“To minimize the visual impact of the new fencing and to respect the historical and artistic value of the monumental complex as much as possible, metal modules have been designed with a profile that recalls both the geometry of the curved shapes of the travertine columns and the linear profiles of the existing 19th-century iron fencing,” the office said. “The modules will be harmonized with the 19th-century fencing through powder coating of the metal profiles and subsequent matt painting in antique iron color.”
The fence is “completely reversible” without damaging the historic monument, according to local authorities.
The new admission fee policies to visit the Trevi Fountain comes weeks after authorities in Paris implemented a 45-percent surcharge for non-EU visitors to the Louvre Museum.
The impost thus established a dual-pricing admission fee tier system to the Louvre.
Similar to Mayor Gualtieri’s calls, Parisian authorities justified the fee hikes citing a need to raise money to fund renovation works for the museum.
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