Here we have some beautiful photos of the legendary Broken Bridge, one of the bridges that crossed the Tiber, with a very exciting history. It is another way to understand how many wonders has Rome, and how sometimes even the ruins could fascinate us...
Today, in fact, we see how it as a simple ruin (we are near the Tiber Island, between it and the Ponte Testaccio). It seems that originally the bridge was already built at the III centuries b.C. by Manlio Emilio Lepido having a wooden soul and structure. Subsequently it was restored several times, changing his name often, until another member of the Emilii family, in the personality of the censor Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and his colleague Marcus Fulvius Nobiliore, not turned in to a stone bridge. It was probably the first of its kind in Rome. Since then, in homage to one of the censors, this bridge is also called the Pons Aemilius. In the course of the centuries, the other restorations, and the due and numerous destructions due to floods, was this extraordinary historical document. Oh yes, because this bridge was a witness of the most violent flood that Rome has ever had.
We are at the December 23th of the 1598, when around 11PM the Tiber overflew, with a full really overwhelming. The water reached its historical maximum: 19,56 meters height. The water began to drain only the 25th in the morning, when he had already caused approximately 4000 deaths, coming to engulf the Pantheon of six meters. This tragic flood was decreed at the end of the bridge, which collapsed almost completely. The only portion that remained was the one that today we can still admire the fair, from the avenues of the Tiber or the Tiber Island. It is also right to emphasize how, before 1598, the bridge had already suffered numerous damages due to the other floods (and it was not the only one, try to read here). For this, at the end of that fateful year, the fall were arches and masonry rebuilt, even on a project by Michelangelo, in the middle of the XVI century. In the course of the late XIX century, when Rome was already the Capital of Italy, attempts were made to complete the bridge, reattaching it to both banks of the river, and creating a structure in iron. Even that, however, was destroyed by another flood.
Only with the arrival of the so called Muraglioni (the walls that are enclosing the shores of the Tiber), completed in 1893, finally, the city was endowed with a true defence against rabies and the rushing of the river. It is therefore interesting to understand how these ruins have witnessed some of the tragedies natural that struck the Eternal City. Even if the Broken Bridge is today surrounded by the nature it is sure that this union between the roman engineering and the green of the leaves and trees contributes to make the atmoshpere of the area so soft and quite magical. The ruins of the Broken Bridge in Rome were immortalized over the centuries by several artists, painters and engravers because they became the symbol of the eternity of the ancient Rome, that was able to defeat even the time. I think that these remains could be considered like the "talking ruins" thought by Piranesi (a famous architect and engraver from the XVIII century), ruins that are able to tell us a very long story...
