Tiber
The Tevere (Italian: Tevere) is the third longest river in Italy (after the Po and Adige rivers), with a length of 405 km.
It rises in the Apennines, on Mount Fumaiolo, in the Romagna region, and crosses the regions of Umbria and Lazio, passing through the cities of Perugia and Rome. It flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea, which reaches divided into two arms at Ostia, the Isola Sacra (to the south) and Fiumicino (to the north). In its course there are numerous bridges, some of them of great historical-artistic value.
History of the Tiber
The river was used for many centuries as a means of communication: in Roman times, commercial ships could go up the river to Rome, to the market located at the foot of the Aventine, while smaller boats suitable for river navigation transported merchandise and agricultural products from Umbria, through a capillary navigation system that penetrated the region even in the tributaries, in particular the Chiancio and the Topino.
The development of road and rail transport and the progressive drying up, or aggradation, of the channels in the lower part of the basin have completely annulled this possibility of using the river (which lasted until approximately the middle of 800). Navigation is currently limited to tourist and sporting purposes with boats that have traveled, since the 1990s, sections of the river that crosses the city of Rome.
According to the chronicles of Tito Livio[citation needed] the original name was the Albula river, serving as a border between the Etruscans and the Latins, and there was a ruler named Tiberinus, who was drowned at the crossing of the Albula, and for whom the river, which henceforth became the famous Tiber, was given its name.
The Tiber as it passes through Rome
The Tiber in the origins of Rome
From its birth, Rome was tied to the river. In fact, it owes its very existence to him, as it is already described from the first scene of the founding legend with Romulus and Remus in the basket deposited on the banks of the Tiber.
Beyond the myth, the settlements that would give rise to the city were located on the hills near a ford in the river, near the Tiberina island. The lower area was a swampy plain, as the Tiber has always been a river subject to unforeseen flooding. The joint work of the villages drained this area, where the Forum was located, a meeting and exchange point between the Etruscan populations that dominated the right bank (later called Ripa Veientana) and the populations of the Latium vetus on the left bank (the Ripa Latina).
The island was also the limit to which the old shallow draft ships that came from the mouth of the Tyrrhenian Sea could reach.
A short distance downstream, the first bridge in Rome, the Sublician Bridge, was built (in wood, and remained as such for centuries); so important that, according to some authors, its maintenance gave rise to the most important priestly position in Rome: the "maximum pontiff".
The river itself was considered a divinity, personified in the Pater Tiberinus, whose festival was celebrated every year on December 8, coinciding with the anniversary of the founding of the temple dedicated to his honor in Tiber Island.
Floods, ports, mills and stories of the Tiber
The marginal retaining walls of the boulevards of the Lungotevere —as in Paris or Florence— make it difficult to imagine to what extent the ancient city was a fluvial city, with its destiny marked by the river evolution: this has been maintained up to the 20th century. But this connection with the river, which by the way was a notable economic resource, was also—always—high risk.
Titus Livio already documented that the floods of the Tiber, frequently disastrous, were considered by the Roman people as predictions of important events or punishments, and indeed, in addition to destruction, they brought about epidemics caused by the stagnation of the waters. As late as the 19th century the fact that the arrival of the Piedmontese in Rome was greeted by a disastrous flood, on 28 December 1870, confirmed the Roman people in their never-forgotten ancestral belief.
The great floods (on average there were 3 or 4 per century) always reached Rome via the Via Flaminia: downstream from the confluence with the Aniene river, free until then to spread over flat territories, which constitute the main bed of the river. From this point it began to find buildings and bridges that hindered it (the Sublicio Bridge was repeatedly washed away by the alluvium) and its remains were found in squares and roads.
Julius Caesar imagined straightening the meanders of the river by diverting it around the Janiculum (that is, making it avoid Trastevere and the Fori plain) and channeling it through the Pontine palules in the direction of Circeo.
Augusto, of a more realistic and "administrative" temperament, after having appointed a commission of 700 experts, limited himself to ordering the river basin to be cleaned and to institutionalizing a specific magistracy, Curatores alvei et riparum Tiberis, a position held by Marco Vipsanio Agrippa for life.
Tiberius's experts suggested diverting the waters of the Chiani towards the Arno river, but due to the opposition of the Florentines the project was abandoned (the project was resumed and abandoned again in 1870).
Trajano must have completed the Fiumicino canal (the so-called Fosa Trajana), begun by Claudio, which is used for navigation, but at the same time improves the flow of water towards the sea.
The last emperor who ordered a radical cleaning of the channel (alveo) and the construction of riverside defenses was Aureliano.
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