Yesterday, the Trevi Fountain ran red, and no, it wasn’t for some festive reason like a Fendi show. It was red because an Italian activist, Graziano Cecchini, dyed its waters as a protest against corruption. According to a statement*, Cecchini said it was a “cry that Rome isn’t dead, that it’s alive and ready to return to be the capital of art, life, and Renaissance.” It’s the second time he’s done this in 10 years.
The Trevi Fountain is to Rome like the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, the Statue of Liberty to New York, and Big Ben to London: a symbol of the city. So it makes sense that Cecchini picked it. In fact, for years, protesters have been picking similar spots for “stunts.” Just this spring, Greenpeace hung a banner reading liberty, equality, fraternity in French from the Eiffel Tower as a statement against conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. A few weeks later, an anti-whaling group doused Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue in red paint (activists and red go well together, it seems). Two years ago, the lights of Germany’s Cologne Cathedral shuttered as a statement against anti-Muslim sentiment.
All of these stunts got attention—which, for the people doing it, is exactly the point. But what happens when protests go awry, and a cultural landmark is at stake? Although Cecchini insisted the dye wasn’t harmful, authorities immediately turned off the fountain’s hydraulics and drained the water as a preventative measure. “Actions like this display ignorance and a total lack of civic sense,” Luca Bergamo, deputy mayor of Rome, said. Nelson’s Column and the Victoria Memorial in London were damaged during an Anonymous protest in 2013. And then there’s the cringeworthy Greenpeace protest that damaged treasured geoglyphs in Peru’s Nazca Desert. The country’s then-vice-minister of culture slammed it as “thoughtless, insensitive, illegal, irresponsible, and absolutely pre-meditated.”
Stunts make a statement. But for protesters exercising their civic rights with a city beacon, it may be best to remember one simple rule: no harm, no foul.