The Water Porter

This is one of our favourite fountains, even thought it is not majestic like the Fountain of the Four Rivers, and is built on a much smaller scale, yet it is so different from everything else. The water porter is not easily found. There are people that have spent all of their lives in Rome, and are not even aware of its existence! This is quite surprising considering it is located in the very centre of the city, just 20 meters away from Via del Corso, the main shopping street in the historical centre, in Via Lata, and 400 meters away by foot from Trevi fountain.

Once you reach the correct road, it might still be difficult to spot it, since it’s not a monumental composition but rather a small statue embedded below the windowsill. If you think it’s quite a weird location, you are actually right and should know that it originally stood on the main facade of the same building in Via del Corso, butwas moved to its current location only in 1874.
The composition is very simple: a water porter is portrayed wearing a hat and traditional clothes, and he stands with its barrel from where the water is spouted inside a small elevated water basin.

The water porter fountain is a part of a cycle of “talking statues”, a total of six pieces that were used as some kind of political bulletin boards for sticking satirical verses by the people in the 16th century.
All other talking statues date back m to the ancient Roman times, except this one sculpted probably around 1580 by Jacopo del Conte. It depicts a scene of real life before the completion of water works, when water porters were filling up their barrels in the river Tiberim for sale in the city.