Ponte Sisto

Feel the paving under your feet. It is smooth and slightly uneven, worn by centuries of shoes, cart wheels, and now the soft roll of suitcases. Below you, the Tiber runs green and brown, sliding past the arches without much sound. Gulls call overhead. On one side, the rooftops of Trastevere. On the other, the old streets of the Regola district. You are standing on a bridge that has carried Romans across this river for more than five hundred years.

This is Ponte Sisto. It is named after Pope Sixtus the Fourth, who commissioned it in the 1470s. That name may sound familiar. The same pope gave his name to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Here, though, his project was practical rather than painted. He wanted a reliable crossing over the river at a time when Rome was preparing for crowds of pilgrims. A Jubilee year was approaching, and the city needed to move people safely.

Here is the first thing many visitors miss. This bridge was not built on empty water. Beneath its foundations lie the remains of an ancient Roman bridge. In antiquity, a crossing stood at roughly this spot, and in the fourth century it was rebuilt under the Emperor Valentinian. Over time that older bridge was damaged and fell into ruin. For centuries, Romans knew it as a broken bridge, a crossing that no longer crossed anything.

So when Sixtus the Fourth built his new bridge, he was reviving an old line across the river. Ponte Sisto is often described as the first bridge built over the Tiber in Rome since ancient times. Think about that for a moment. For roughly a thousand years, through the long medieval centuries, the city added no new bridges here. This one marked a turn. Rome was beginning to rebuild itself, and the popes wanted the city to look like a capital again.

The design is often credited to Baccio Pontelli, an architect who worked for this pope, though the attribution is not entirely certain. What is certain is the shape you see. Four arches carry the deck across the water. The materials are brick and pale travertine, the cream-coloured limestone that appears all over Rome. Lean over the parapet and look along the side. You can see how the stone facing and the brick work together, patched and repaired over many generations.

Now look at the centre of the bridge, just above the middle pier. There is a round opening cut right through the stonework, like a single eye looking out over the river. Romans have a nickname for it — the occhialone, which means something like the big eye. It has a practical purpose. When the river rises, the opening lets water pass through and eases the pressure on the structure. But it also gave rise to a popular local tale.

According to the old saying, Romans watched that round opening during flood season. If the water climbed high enough to reach the eye, it was a warning that the city was about to flood. Whether people really relied on it, or whether it was simply a good story, is hard to say. But floods were a real and serious danger here. The Tiber regularly spilled into the low streets of the city, sometimes with terrible results.

That danger explains the high stone walls you see along both banks. These massive embankments were built in the late nineteenth century, after Rome became the capital of a united Italy. They tamed the floods, but they also changed the relationship between the city and its river. Before them, houses and mills stood close to the water. Today the river runs in a deep stone channel, and the bridge rises from it like something from an older city.

Look toward the Trastevere end of the bridge. In the small square there, you will see a large fountain set against a wall, with water falling into a basin. This is the Fontanone di Ponte Sisto. It was built in the early seventeenth century, but not in this spot. It originally stood on the other side of the river, at the end of Via Giulia. When the embankments were built, the fountain was taken apart and later reassembled here, on the Trastevere side.

The square around it is Piazza Trilussa. It takes its name from a poet known as Trilussa, who wrote verse in Romanesco, the local dialect of Rome. His poems were witty and sharp, often using animals to poke fun at human vanity and politics. Near the steps you can find a monument to him. In the evening this square fills with people sitting on the fountain steps, talking, eating, and watching the bridge. It is one of the city's favourite meeting places.

Today the bridge is open only to people on foot. That makes it a good place to slow down. Walk to the middle and turn to look upstream. On a clear day, you can see the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica rising above the trees and rooftops in the distance. Then turn downstream and follow the river as it curves away. You may notice street musicians, painters, or vendors setting up along the deck, especially later in the day.

This is the second surprise. A bridge that was once a symbol of papal power has become a crossing for ordinary evenings. Students cross it on their way to dinner in Trastevere. Couples stop to lean on the parapet. Families walk across with ice cream. The bridge links two very different moods of the city. One side leads toward the narrow lanes near Campo de' Fiori and the elegant straight line of Via Giulia. The other leads into the tangled, lively streets of Trastevere.

Before you move on, stand still for a moment near the centre. Rest your hand on the parapet. The stone is cool, rough in places and polished smooth in others. Listen to the water below and the voices around you. Look again at that round eye in the stonework, watching the river as it has for centuries. Wherever you walk next, toward the fountain or toward the old streets, you are following a path that Romans have taken for a very long time.