Opera Arias in the Palace the Trevi Fountain Leans Against

Almost nobody standing in front of the Trevi Fountain registers that it is not a free-standing monument. It is built against the facade of a palace, Palazzo Poli, and the whole composition, the columns, the pediment, the figures, is that building's front wall rearranged around water. This concert is inside it. The programme is the great opera arias, sung live, in rooms hung with the palace's own artworks, and the windows look down onto the fountain from above. The crowd is there, the noise of the water is there, and you are on the other side of the glass, several metres up, watching the thing the crowd came for. A short concert in a historic palace is a reasonable proposition anywhere in Rome. The address is what makes this one worth the seat. The fountain is that palace's front and also the end of an aqueduct. Water still arrives through the Acqua Vergine, laid by Agrippa in 19 BC and running ever since, and a display on this scale is what Rome traditionally built at the point where an aqueduct came out. Nicola Salvi began the present composition in 1732 and died before it was done. Giuseppe Pannini finished it in 1762, thirty years after the first stone was cut. Two things are easier to see from a window above than from the crush at water level. The figure in the central niche is Oceanus rather than Neptune, pulled by two sea horses, one of them calm and one of them fighting the reins, which is how the sculptor put both moods of the sea into the same group. And the coins are collected every day: the fountain takes well over a million euros a year, and the money goes to a Catholic charity that runs food services in the city. From the piazza the upper storeys read as part of the monument, which is exactly why almost nobody looks up at them or notices that there are windows. During the concert you are behind those windows, and the sightline runs the other way. The billing is I Solisti di Opera Lirica di Roma: two violins, viola and cello behind the voices. It runs an hour with no interval, which puts it comfortably either side of dinner, and no more than ten seats go on a single booking. The practical detail is unusually complete for a concert listing. The room is air conditioned and has Wi-Fi and a charging point. Both it and the lavatory are wheelchair accessible. Infants sit on an adult's lap. Soft drinks are not included. Nothing about the evening asks anything of your legs, and an hour seated indoors is worth more than it sounds in a Roman August, or in rain. One note on the listing: it is titled for Palazzo della Cancelleria, while the venue given for the performance is Palazzo Poli, which is the building at the Trevi Fountain. Confirm the address with the operator before setting out. The address given for the concert is Via della Stamperia 6, round the back of the fountain rather than on the piazza itself, so allow a moment to find the right door through the crowd on the steps.