Footage of roadworks adjacent to 17th-century fountain prompts alarm among heritage groups and the public, as the sculpture stood entirely unprotected.
Video footage showing a mechanical digger operating just centimetres away from a Rome fountain designed by Baroque genius Gian Lorenzo Bernini has sparked concern in Italy.
The Fontana delle Api, which features bees – the symbol of the Barberini family, after whom the adjacent piazza is named – stands at the entrance to Via Veneto, one of Rome’s most celebrated streets.
The footage shows the vehicle’s mechanical arm and iron-toothed bucket working at extremely close range to the fountain – which was commissioned by Pope Urban VIII – with no protective barriers or padding of any kind placed around the monument.
The absense of any means to safeguard the fountain during the roadworks has drawn criticism and raised questions about how the monument could be left exposed to the risk of accidental damage from heavy machinery.
A brief history
The fountain was dismantled in 1865 for traffic reasons and placed in municipal storage, then reassembled between 1915 and 1916 in its current position at the corner of Piazza Barberini facing Via Vittorio Veneto.
According to Rome’s capitoline superintendency, only fragments of the central bee and the shell on which it rests are original to the Bernini work.
The fountain was fully restored in 2017 thanks to funding from a group of Dutch patrons, who contributed as a symbolic gesture of goodwill to Rome following the vandalism carried out by Feyenoord supporters at the Fontana della Barcaccia in 2015.
The Fontana delle Api is located a short walk away from Palazzo Barberini which is currently hosting a major Bernini exhibition.
