Pons Aemilius

Listen first. Below you, the Tiber is moving fast over a shallow stretch, and the water makes a low, steady rush against stone. Look out over the river and you will see a single arch standing alone in the current. It connects to nothing. There is no road on top, no bank on either side. It is simply there, holding its ground, with grass and small shrubs growing from its upper edge. This is the Pons Aemilius. Romans today call it the Ponte Rotto, which means the broken bridge.

What you are looking at is the oldest surviving stone bridge in Rome. That is the first surprise for most visitors. They walk past the round temple and the busy traffic of the riverside road, and they assume this lonely arch is a ruin of no great importance. In fact, its story begins in the second century before Christ, when Rome was still a republic and the city was just becoming the most powerful force in the Mediterranean.

According to the Roman historian Livy, the first piers here were laid in 179 BCE. Two censors ordered the work. Censors were senior Roman officials who managed public building and kept the list of citizens. One of them was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and the bridge carries his family name. In its first form, the crossing probably used stone piers with a wooden deck. A complete set of stone arches came later, in 142 BCE, under another pair of censors.

Why build a bridge in this exact place? Look around you. Just upstream sits Tiber Island, which splits the river in two. Behind you, on the left bank, lay the Forum Boarium, the old cattle market of Rome, and the river harbour where goods arrived by boat. This was one of the busiest corners of the ancient city. A stone crossing here tied the markets to the far bank, where the district of Trastevere grows today.

Now look closely at the river itself. The water around this arch rarely sits still. The Tiber bends here, and the current swirls past the island. Over many centuries, that strength became the bridge's great enemy. Every major flood pushed debris and water against the piers. The Romans repaired the bridge again and again. Later builders, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, did the same. Each generation patched what the river had damaged.

In the Middle Ages the bridge took on new names. One of them was Ponte di Santa Maria, after a church image of the Virgin associated with the crossing. Another name, Ponte Senatorio, linked it to the Roman Senate, which during that period held a role in maintaining the city's bridges. The names changed, but people kept crossing here. For well over a thousand years, this was a working bridge, carrying pilgrims, merchants, and carts.

The sixteenth century brought the most dramatic chapter. A great flood in 1557 badly damaged the structure. Pope Gregory the Thirteenth then ordered a full restoration, completed in the 1570s. It looked as if the old bridge had been saved. Then, in 1598, another huge flood struck Rome. The river tore away several arches at once. After that, nobody tried seriously to rebuild it. The bridge was left broken, and the name Ponte Rotto stuck.

Here is the second surprise, and you can check it with your own eyes. Look at the face of the surviving arch. If the light is good, you may make out carved dragons on the stonework. These are not ancient Roman decoration. The dragon was the heraldic emblem of Pope Gregory the Thirteenth's family, the Boncompagni. So the arch you see is a layered object. Its roots are Roman, but much of its visible surface comes from that papal restoration, just before the final collapse.

For almost three centuries after 1598, a few arches still stood in the river. People made the broken bridge into a viewpoint and even a small destination. Painters and engravers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries loved it. They drew it as a romantic ruin, with the river rushing through the gaps and the island behind. If you have seen old prints of Rome, there is a good chance you have seen this bridge without knowing its name.

The last big change came in the late nineteenth century. Rome became the capital of a newly united Italy, and engineers rebuilt the riverbanks with high stone embankments to stop the floods. They also built the modern bridge just downstream, the Ponte Palatino. To make room and to free the current, they removed most of what remained of the old crossing. Only one arch was left standing. That is the arch in front of you now.

Take a moment to notice the textures. The stone of the arch is pale and weathered, with dark streaks where water and time have stained it. Plants grow from the cracks along the top. Gulls sometimes rest on it. The surrounding embankment walls are much smoother and more regular, a clear sign of their modern origin. Standing here, you can see two very different ideas of how to deal with a river, side by side.

If you walk onto the Ponte Palatino, you get one of the best views of the lone arch, with Tiber Island just beyond it. From the riverbank below, near the base of the Palatino bridge, you may also spot an old arched opening in the embankment wall. That is the outlet of the Cloaca Maxima, the ancient great drain of Rome. Nearby, back on the street, stand the round Temple of Hercules Victor and the rectangular Temple of Portunus, two of the best preserved temples from the republican city.

This small area holds a remarkable concentration of the very early city. The market, the harbour, the drain, the temples, and this bridge all belonged to the same working neighbourhood more than two thousand years ago. Today, most people rush through it in cars and buses. But if you stop and look, you can still read the outline of how the ancient Romans used this bend in the river.

Before you move on, look once more at the arch. Notice how the water divides around its base and joins again behind it. That same movement has pressed against these stones for more than twenty centuries. The bridge no longer carries anyone across. Its job now is simply to remain. As you walk away along the river, listen again to the sound of the current. It is the same sound that, in the end, broke the bridge.