Self-described anarchists poured dye into Rome’s Trevi Fountain, turning the water in the tourist magnet a bright blood-red.

Leaflets left around the fountain referred to the RomeFilmFest which opened Thursday in the Italian capital: “You wanted just a red carpet; we want a city entirely in vermilion” before denouncing the event’s 15-million-euro (21-million-dollar) budget.

It has been found a box of leaflets nearby in which a previously unknown group called the “FTM Futuristic Action 2007″ claimed responsibility. The group says it seeks to defend the unemployed, old and sick, among others.

The tract said the group opposed “this grey and bourgeois society … We who are vulnerable, old, ill, students, workers, we come with vermilion to color your greyness.”

Actress Anita Ekberg famously frolicked in the fountain’s pool in the 1960s film La Dolce Vita.