The Trevi Fountain is definitely the most famous fountain in Rome and not only. Millions of tourists flock every year from all over the world to immortalize her with their cameras, to fix it in their minds and also to throw a coin into its crystal clear water, as a wish for a speedy return to the Eternal City. After all, if it took thirty years to create this extraordinary work, something to say! And I personally am here almost everyday to describe it.

Imagine how we're in 1731 when Pope Clement XII established a contest to put the word end to the project of a fountain, that it should be held on a facade of Palazzo Poli. At the beginning it seems that won the Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, a French sculptor. Then, and here the interpretations are multiple, the work will be followed by Nicola Salvi, who created the project that can be seen still today. The site construction began at the 1732 to end in 1762 (will be the architect Giuseppe Pannini to finish the yard). Now, if you have the Trevi Fountain right in front of you, go to the right, skirting the fountain and keeping it to your left. When the crowd starts to thin out, before the military checkpoint, onthe left you will see this great travertine vessel (in photo), commonly known as the Ace of Cups.

This curious nickname comes from the similarity that this element has with the ace of cups of the cards. Now, the question that arises is: what is this strange and large vase here, completely out of context compared with the whole symbolic and decorative apparatus of  the Trevi Fountain? There is one legend in particular that deserves to be told... it seems that in the course of the years, while Nicola Salvi cared so much to carry on project, and his masterpiece, there was a town barber whose shop opened right on the square where now stands the beautiful fountain. This man, perhaps, with the typical roman irony, used to point the finger against the project, criticizing what he used to see. Daily critics that, of course, could be very bothersomes. The poor architect wasn't able to support the barber anymore, a man who really criticized everything that Nicola Salvi did. So what was the solution devised by the architect?

Simple: put this large travertine vase right there, on the balustrade in the left of the Fountain and directly in front of the shop of the barber, so he had the camera completely covered and no longer able, as before, to harass the project without prejudice. A interesting and curious gimmick, although, when you think about it, the Ace of Cups looks like a lot to one of the containers usually used by barbers...