blog assignment #6

When people hear of Trevi, they automatically think of the fountain. Trevi’s main focal point is the fountain; it is one of the main attractions to see when coming to Rome and to be honest, the same went for me. All I knew was that it was the largest fountain in Rome and the person in the middle of the fountain is Neptune, the god of the sea. The first time I was there it was very astounding, I came to Rome by myself and a few days before the program started so I was just walking about and seeing all the sights on the map. All through my walks I came across fountain after fountain and it was nice to see them compared to back in Seattle. But then I walked over to the Trevi fountain and it was something else. There were flocks of people everywhere and I could tell that this was a tourist trap as there was a ton of gelato shops, souvenir shops, pizzerias and restaurants there.

The assignment for this blog was for my partner and I to go to the rione and interview people in the area; at least one resident and one visitor. We came across a couple who looked like tourist and to find out later they were visiting from Sweden. We asked questions about if they knew anything about the area and why they chose to go there. Standing in the pouring rain, the first response was that it would have been a lot better if it weren’t raining. But besides the rain, they said that they enjoyed the area though they came pretty much for the fountain and didn’t know anything else about the area. They didn’t know anything about different rioni in Rome. I would have to agree, as I didn’t know anything about this until going into more dept with my studies here in Rome.

Getting out of the rain, we stopped into a gelato shop and spoke to one of the employees. She was actually an Albanian student here in Italy but has been here for 10 years. She is studying international relations and has only been working at the shop for a little over a year. She was able to help us by giving us a different perspective of the neighborhood. All the businesses around the fountain cater to tourist and knowing that they can capitalize from this, things are usually marked up. Another way these businesses were making money was the employment they were hiring. Our interviewee told us that usually immigrants work in the businesses around Trevi because they pay less. According to her, there isn’t a lot of places for someone to live in Trevi, its more businesses and for the ones that are there are expensive. She doesn’t live in Trevi because she said it cost too much to live there. She also said that in the historical area, it’s all expensive but everyone want so live there. She didn’t know much about the area other than that. We tried to find someone else but it was pouring down rain and not a lot of people were out other than tourist.