- A video shot last month shows a tourist climbing into the Trevi Fountain to fill her bottle.
- She seemed to believe she'd done nothing wrong when confronted by a guard, an onlooker told Storyful.
A woman was filmed climbing into Rome's Trevi Fountain to fill up her water bottle in yet another case of tourists behaving badly at Italy's historic sites this summer.
The clip, filmed on July 18 by an onlooker named Lex Jones and obtained by news agency Storyful, shows the woman walking over a row of rocks to reach the center of the iconic attraction.
She then fills her bottle from a spout in the fountain, before a guard blows a whistle and confronts her. After speaking to the tourist, the guard is seen leading the trespasser away.
—Storyful (@Storyful) August 14, 2023
"There were signs all over saying that's not allowed," Jones told Storyful.
The tourist didn't seem to understand what she did wrong and tried explaining her actions to the guard, Jones added.
It's not immediately clear if the tourist was fined or arrested. State Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Just weeks before, a tourist angered local authorities by swimming in Trevi Fountain on July 28 with a blue T-shirt and shorts, reported Italian daily Corriere Della Serra.
Onlookers clapped and cheered for him, according to the outlet.
Rome's Councilor for Major Events, Sport, Tourism and Fashion, Alessandro Onorato, called the incident "pure barbarism," saying it showed how fines and "appeals to common sense" are no longer enough to keep tourists in check.
He urged the Italian Ministries of Culture and the Interior to aid the city in enforcing its rules against drinking and bathing in historic fountains, which were signed into law in 2018.
Authorities sometimes point to a scene from the 1960 film "La Dolce Vita" as the inspiration for tourists swimming in the Trevi Fountain. In the scene, actors Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni are filmed wading in its waters.
The water bottle incident also comes as two separate teenage tourists made headlines for defacing the Colosseum in July.