The parish priest of the Church of Saints Vincent and Anastasia, which overlooks the Trevi Fountain, Rome, has removed the hundreds of padlocks young couples have been attaching to the church railings. The weight of these tokens of eternal love, in fact, has been damaging the decorative wrought iron railings that enclose the steps leading up to the church.

The fashion of locking up your love and throwing away the key was launched a few years ago by a best-selling novel, entitled: Three Metres Above Heaven by Federico Moccia.

Inspired by the two main characters in the book, young lovers began buying padlocks and fixing them to a lamp-post on Rome  Ponte Milvio, a historic bridge over the Tiber, and throwing the keys into the river below. Romes city council was eventually forced to remove the padlocks as they were bringing the lamp-post down. Couples then switched to the Trevi Fountain, made famous in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita.

However, love will find a way and padlock posts continue to spring up in many other places around Italy, and the fashion has spread to other countries as well.