menu
menu
Entertainment

Katy Perry dips bank card in Trevi fountain as she doesn’t carry coins

Nick Squires
22/04/2026 13:33:00

Katy Perry has given a bizarre twist to the practice of tossing a coin into the turquoise waters of Rome’s Trevi Fountain.

The gesture supposedly guarantees that a visitor will return to the Eternal City.

But the American singer found herself in front of the Baroque monument without any coins in her pockets, and so chose to improvise – by dipping her credit card into the water instead.

Perry sang Someone Give Me A Penny as she stood in front of the fountain, which was completed in 1762. It features a large statue of the god Oceanus riding a chariot pulled by seahorses and flanked by tritons, mermen of Greek mythology.

Referring to one of her songs, she said: “Y’all, I told you in Save as Draft that I don’t f--- with change,” adding, “but I feel like I need to put something in the Trevi Fountain for good luck.”

Wearing a baseball cap and a cream hooded top, she dropped a credit card into the water. When the card started to sink to the bottom, she sprang forward and snatched it back, shouting: “Oh no!”

Some Italians were less impressed by the unusual gesture.

“Katy Perry turning the Trevi Fountain into a credit card moment is the most unholy thing, that masterpiece has seen since its opening in 1762,” one wrote on X. “Dolce Vita vibes didn’t stand a chance.”

Another posted a black-and-white image of Anita Ekberg, the Swedish actress, and Marcello Mastroianni, her Italian co-star, standing in the fountain in La Dolce Vita, the classic 1960 film, with the words: “Move over, Katy.”

Perry was on a night-time tour of Rome at the weekend after flying in earlier from New York to give a private concert for a corporate event.

The concert was held in a striking modernist building called La Nuvola (The Cloud) in the EUR district of the capital, which was built by Benito Mussolini in the 1930s.

Her arrival on a private jet was “a big secret”, according to the Italian media.

After her visit to the Trevi Fountain, she changed into a black-and-white dress that recalled Audrey Hepburn in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday.

She was photographed wearing it in St Peter’s Square in front of the Vatican and outside the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

She appeared not to be with her boyfriend Justin Trudeau, the former prime minister of Canada. They became a couple last summer and were recently photographed walking hand-in-hand at the Coachella music festival in California.

Rome recently imposed a €2 (£1.70) entrance fee for tourists who want to see the Trevi Fountain up close. A barrier was erected in February to funnel visitors around the edge of the fountain’s basin, from where they can toss coins into the water.

Coins worth an estimated €3,000 (£2,600) are thrown into the fountain every day, amounting to £1.1m annually.

The money is regularly collected and given to charity. The water that feeds the fountain still comes from an ancient Roman aqueduct, the Acqua Vergine.

by The Telegraph