Water flows continuously from all of them, the place you’ll be able to fill up a reusable water bottle.
That didn’t cease a vacationer from climbing throughout the metropolis’s famed Trevi Fountain to fill her water bottle with water from the 18th century landmark. Though a yellow-vested guard promptly escorted the trespasser out of the historic web site, the video shortly went viral. Rome has had a legislation stopping consuming and bathing in the metropolis’s fountains since 2018.
The incident is simply the newest in a string of incidents that includes badly behaved vacationers at Italian monuments, together with one traveler who carved love notes into the Colosseum and one other in northern Italy who knocked down a 150-year old sculpture price about 200,000 euros.
The girl who stuffed her water bottle at the Trevi did so in the center of July, which was the hottest month ever recorded. (Records return to 1880.) Across southern Europe, widespread warmth waves made journey troublesome at greatest — and chaotic at worst. Maybe the sound of the clear, turquoise water speeding from the Trevi Fountain appeared all however irresistible amid the broiling temperatures.
The fountain gets its water from the Aqua Virgo, one of Rome’s 11 historic aqueducts and the just one that’s nonetheless functioning right this moment. Though the water was initially used as clear consuming water for Romans, some journey websites discourage consuming its water and say it’s recycled.
Amid file breaking temperatures, vacationers from the United States have complained about what they take into account a scarcity of accessible water in European cities. One D.C.-based TikToker expressed concern that her “organs are turning into beef jerky” as a result of they have been “so dry.” “Half my travel budget is water I swear,” she added in the video caption.
Indeed, the tradition round water in Europe is markedly totally different than that in the United States. It’s not widespread to be greeted with an countless provide of free ice water at a restaurant, nor ought to it’s anticipated. The stark distinction has even led some American vacationers to question if Europeans are merely much less thirsty than their counterparts throughout the pond.
Though having to pay for water at a restaurant — and receiving an iceless glass when you do — is usually a tradition shock, European water tradition has some benefits when in comparison with American practices.
For one, most main cities, and even historic cities, have public water fountains scattered all through. Though they give the impression of being totally different from the silver water fountain usually discovered close to public restrooms in the United States, they supply clear, drinkable water all the identical.
In Rome, for instance, vacationers can use an interactive map on the Waidy app from Italian water supplier Acea to search out public water sources close to them.
Even at eating places, the place wine and beer are sometimes considerably cheaper than bottled water, there are methods to get faucet water free. While asking only for “water” will result in being charged for a bottle of glowing or nonetheless, asking for a glass of water or faucet water will usually get you it free.
This is true throughout Europe. In some nations, corresponding to Spain, eating places are required by law to offer free faucet water when requested.
Unlike eating places in America, European eating places most likely received’t refill your faucet water except you ask — and typically they received’t even then. But when that’s the case, you’ll be able to splurge on a bottle or hunt for a public water fountain at the finish of your meal.
Travelers needs to be warned: insisting on faucet water and asking for ice is a decidedly “American” thing to do, as journey influencers on TikTok have shared. That doesn’t imply, nonetheless, that you just shouldn’t ask anyway. It’s higher to commit the comparatively small cultural fake pas of asking without cost water than to climb right into a historic fountain in search of it.
