Romes Trevi fountain replaced by ugly municipal pool as officials plan to charge admission

You’re outta luck.Tourists headed to Rome’s Trevi Fountain in hopes of tossing the traditional coins, brace yourselves — the beloved historic site has been shut down for construction work.For the time being, unwitting visitors will find the ancient water feature — said to typically take in more than $3,200 per day, according to officials — replaced by a utilitarian, temporary wishing well that one critic suggested offered all the charm of a ‘municipal swimming pool.’The water was drained and the scenic site was roped off last month for refurbishment work — a step toward the plan to charge the site’s roughly four million annual visitors a fee to get up close and personal with the bucket list location.“We have to avoid, especially in a fragile art city like Rome, that too many tourists damage the tourist experience, and damage the city,’’ tourism official Alessandro Onorato told the AP, explaining the need for the planned fee of about $2.“We need to safeguard two things, that tourists don’t experience chaos and that citizens can continue to live in the center,” he said.

Visitors are currently able to crowd onto an elevated walkway running above the site, before tossing coins in the temporary pool.Once work is completed, timed reservations will reportedly be required for the best viewing areas.This would be the first attempt to regulate the area since the fountain was built in 1732, according to The Sun.

Social media lit up with criticism of the sudden switcheroo — with one renaming the fountain the “Trevi swimming pool,” The Guardian reported.“Imagine if you’d flown 14 hours to see the Trevi fountain and instead find a municipal swimming pool,” another critic tsked.The change comes as a host of popular Mediterranean destinations consider ways to combat overtourism, which has become a hot-button issue in Spain, Italy, Greece and elsewhere in recent years.Cruisers stopping off in Mykonos and Santorini, for example, could so...