Turin Fountains

Having had to attend one of these work-conference things in Turin (bummer, eh?), I decided to make the weekend of it in Italy's winter Olympic city. And a lovely place it is, crowded with all those large and lavish monuments to both aristocracy and church that Italians seem to do so well. Pointless though pretty I guess. But my interest was taken by a considerably more modest structure – a fountain in a public park on the banks of the Po. This small fountain seemed to have a disproportionately large number of spouts through which water was projected with varying force in many different directions, all choreographed (really rather well) to well-known pieces of classical music. It was like one of these fireworks-to-music shows, but with water rather than explosives. There was no ‘operator’ visible and the whole thing seemed essentially very simple and low-cost. And all sorts of people were gathered around the fountain thoroughly engaged by the spectacle. That is in Turin. At the other end of the spectrum, Edinburgh has a rather large, Victorian fountain in a prime site – Princes Street Gardens – which in over 30 years resident in the city I have never seen doing what it is I assume fountains are best suited to doing. Maybe this somewhat overdue new initiative for improving Edinburgh's parks can borrow some simple and inexpensive ideas from our Italian friends…at least on those few remaining inner-city areas of parkland which the Cooncil hasn't sold to property developers on which to build (and profit from) lavish (and distinctly non-affordable) houses...