Wishing fountains of the world

What counts as a wishing fountain

Less than you would think, and more. The Trevi Fountain is the obvious case: a basin, a coin, a rule about which shoulder. But the tradition it belongs to is older than fountains, and its living relatives look nothing like it.

In Kyoto you drink rather than throw. In Prague you touch bronze and give nothing. At Glastonbury you are asked to leave only what will rot. At Chichén Itzá the offerings were gold, and the correct thing to give today is nothing at all.

What ties them together is not the water or the coin. It is a place designed to make you stop, a small irreversible act, and a request you keep to yourself.

The places

Twelve sites, from a Roman spring that swallowed twelve thousand coins to a Hong Kong banyan that had to be protected from its own popularity. Each entry covers how the local ritual actually works, where it came from, and what to do — or not do — if you go.

The traditions behind them

Three longer pieces sit behind the individual places: the structure that every wishing ritual shares, the archaeology of why anyone started throwing metal into springs, and a survey of the forms the same act takes elsewhere — written, floated, burned, tied, snapped.

And an online one

eFountain exists because the gesture turns out to travel. You throw a coin, you make a wish, and the wish is never published — kept, or sealed so that not even we can read it. The rules that make the ritual work are the same ones this guide describes: something real is given up, the moment is deliberate, and nothing is said out loud.

The first coin is free, which is our way of saying that you should find out whether it does anything for you before you decide what it is worth.

Places

Twelve sites where people go to make a wish, and how each one expects it to be done.

• Rome, Italy

  The Trevi Fountain, Rome

  The most famous wishing fountain on earth, and the one that fixed the rules everyone else copies: right hand, left shoulder, back to the water.

• Florence, Italy

  Il Porcellino, Florence

  A bronze boar with a snout polished gold by four centuries of hands, and a coin trick that only counts if the money falls through the grate.

• Bath, England

  The Sacred Spring at Bath

  Before wishing fountains there were sacred springs. The one at Bath gave up twelve thousand Roman coins — and a hundred letters to a goddess.

• Glastonbury, England

  Chalice Well, Glastonbury

  A spring that runs red with iron and has never been known to fail. Here you leave a ribbon or a word, not a coin.

• Prague, Czechia

  St John of Nepomuk, Charles Bridge

  Prague's wishing ritual costs nothing and involves no water. You put your hand on a bronze relief worn gold by millions of others.

• Barcelona, Spain

  Font de Canaletes, Barcelona

  A small iron fountain at the top of La Rambla with one rule: drink from it and you will return to Barcelona.

• Central Park, New York, United States

  Bethesda Fountain, New York

  An angel blessing the water, commissioned to celebrate the arrival of clean water in a city that had been dying of the lack of it.

• Yucatán, Mexico

  The Sacred Cenote, Chichén Itzá

  A sixty-metre sinkhole that the Maya filled with gold, jade and incense to reach Chaac. The most serious offering site in this guide — and the one you must not touch.

• Kyoto, Japan

  Otowa Waterfall, Kiyomizu-dera

  Three streams of the same spring, each promising something different. You are expected to choose one — taking all three is greed.

• Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples across Japan

  The saisen box, Japan

  The world's most-performed coin ritual. A five-yen piece, a bell, two bows and two claps — and something subtly different from a wish.

• Bangkok, Thailand

  The 108 bowls of Wat Pho

  A corridor of 108 bronze bowls, one coin in each, and a sound that follows you the whole way down.

• Lam Tsuen, Tai Po, Hong Kong

  The Wishing Trees of Lam Tsuen

  Wishes written on red paper, tied to an orange and thrown into a banyan — a tradition that had to be redesigned after a branch came down.

The tradition

Where the gesture comes from, what every version of it shares, and the forms it takes elsewhere.

• How to make a wish

  Strip away the local detail and every wishing tradition on earth does the same four things. Here they are, and here is why they work.

• Why we throw coins into fountains

  The habit predates fountains, predates Christianity, and began as something considerably more serious than luck.

• Wishing traditions around the world

  Written, floated, burned, tied, snapped, blown out or thrown. A tour of how the same act takes a dozen different forms.