Sometimes, people complain that the Church should be more generous of its treasures, well kept at the Vatican.

Well, there was a time when, at a certain time of the year, it was sufficient to go under the Pope's balcony to have a good chance of grabbing some nice gold coins on the fly ..

In Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, under the obelisk, there is a beautiful fountain which was inaugurated in 1607 by Pope Paul V Borghese.

Although, nowadays, the traffic that surrounds it does not highlight it and does not pay particular attention to it, the heraldic symbols of the Borghese stand out on it: the eagle and the dragon.

There was, on the same site, a bronze statue of St. John the Evangelist, unfortunately disappeared after it was damaged by a lightning in the 19th century.

The monolithic obelisk above it, the tallest in the world, was found in 1588 in the Circus Maximus and erected here on the orders of Pope Sixtus V.

According to popular rumors, bathing your hands with the water of this fountain allows you to ward off the evil eye and the witches; operation to be done on the night of St. John's Feast, which is traditionally held on June 24, the day on which tradition places the birth of the Saint.

Such celebration was strongly linked to pagan traditions connected with the summer solstice.

The night before June 24 is usually considered the shortest of the year, and at that time it was also considered the one in which witches wandered around the city in search of souls.

During this festival, in addition to the traditional drinks, which were certainly not moderate, it was the custom of the Romans to indulge in big eats of snails.

Of course, many cheerful songs and dances were an integral part of the festival, in addition to very, very much noise in order to hunt the witches, who were thought to gather on the lawns in front of the Basilica in order to collect herbs for their spells.

All this uproar was only extinguished towards dawn, just before the Pope celebrated Mass in the Basilica, then officially concluding the function with the long-awaited rite of throwing gold and silver coins to the people from the Lodge of Blessings.