Trevi bis: fountain cloned in Brazil | Gramellini’s coffee

In Brazil they made a clone of the Trevi fountain. A little smaller and with silicone statues instead of marble. But at a glance it looks like her, Anita Ekberg’s favorite bathtub. The one that Tot, in another famous film, sold to an American, while the municipality of Rome gave it, apparently free of charge, to the Brazilians, granting them the authorization to reproduce it. The Fontanone bis, which cost three hundred thousand euros, is located near the thermal center of Serra Negra and is passed off as a tribute to Italian emigrants living in the state of São Paulo. Tourists visit it in droves, imagining they are in front of the original, some believing that it really is, and many not even asking the question. On the other hand, everyone repeats the scene they saw at the cinema: they turn their backs and throw a coin into the body of water to wish to return to Rome without ever having been there. A nonsense that in a while no one will pay any attention to.

We are building a world of artificial intelligence and artisanal stupidity where it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the copy from the matrix and the voice from the echo. Those lucky enough to find the originals at home should defend them with love and even a touch of jealousy. Instead, Italy has renounced the exclusive right to the Trevi fountain out of carelessness or gullibility, although the one does not exclude the other. A rare case of theft carried out with the approval (and indifference) of the person being robbed.

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