Cars, raised voices and the gentle splash of water...these are Rome’s distinuishing sounds.

The city has more fountains –and more beautiful ones at that- than any city in the world. Few piazzas are without one, whether a solitary affair gurgling quietly to itself, a masterpiece like Bernini’s Fontana dei quattro fiumi, or a vast erotic caprice like the one relieveing Piazza della Repubblica’s tawdry spawl. Rome can afford to be extravagant- its water is either flowing with wanton ease from hundreds of street-corner taps, or gushing into sinks in countless bars which perversely keep their taps jammed open.
The seemingly bottomless reservoir comes from the mountains to the east, from the Colli Albani, or from ranges like the Simbruini in the foothills of the Apennines, whose very name-literally sub imbribus- derives from the Latin for “heavy rain”. The water from any of Rome’s hundred of street-corner fountains is fine to drink, still as “clear, sweet and fresh” as it was in Petrarch’s day. It is not unusual to see Romans filling up huge carafes to take home from the more renowned fountains.

The fountains to see above all others are the Fontana di Trevi, the Fontana delle Tartarughe, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi and the Fontana delle Naiadi. The city’s real aquatic lifelines, however, are its aqueductus, 11 of which date from classical times. Best know are the Acqua Vergine, built by Augustus, Trajan’s Acqua Paola in the Gianicolo area, where you can see a wanderful view of Rome, and the Acqua Felice, championed by Severus. There is one sour note – the polluted (though slowly improving) Tiber. Until 1950s people fished and swam here but no longer is it Virgil’s “Tiber of the blue water, the river most dear to heaven”.