Fontana del Tritone, Rome Deluge. The passage that Urban set Bernini to illustrate, was well known to all literate Roman contemporaries: Two finished terracotta "bozzetti" at the Detroit Institute of Arts, securely attributed to Bernini, reflect his exploration of the fountain's themes of the intertwined upended dolphins and the muscular, scaly-tailed Triton. The Triton Fountain is one of those evoked in Ottorino Respighi's "Fontane di Roma". The legend applied to Trevi Fountain has been extended to this: that any visitor who throws a coin into the water (while facing away from the fountain) will have guaranteed their return to Rome. The setting of the
Trevi Fountain Vergine, the revived Aqua Virgo, one of the aqueducts that supplied water to ancient Rome. In 19 BC, supposedly with the help of a virgin, Roman technicians located a source of pure water some from the city. (This scene is presented on the present fountain's façade.) However, the eventual indirect route of the aqueduct made its length some . This "Aqua Virgo" led the water into the Baths of Agrippa. It served Rome for more than 400 years. In 1629 Pope Urban VIII, finding the earlier fountain insufficiently dramatic, asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to sketch possible renovations, but the project