The Pons Neronianus, which is more or less visible depending on the level of the Tiber, has been exposed since June due to an exceptional drought.
The hot spell in Italy draws a new page from the Palimpsest of Rome, emerging from its old chapters. At the foot of the Vittorio Emanuele II bridge, in the heart of the capital, a stone snake has been slowly emerging from the olive waters of the Tiber since the end of June. The silhouette of hewn blocks reveals the archaeological character of this limestone valve. It was the Pons Neronianus, an ancient Roman bridge.
The appearance of these remains, appreciated by birds, is not uncommon in Lazio in summer. However, the drought and leaden weather that have plagued Italy for more than a month have tested the waters of the Tiber, the level of which has dropped about five feet from the summer average, and exposed these ruins. Like the Zouave on the Alma Bridge in Paris, this ancient tongue of stone commands the changing power of the river. Romans and Romans, sent or passing through, experience together the burning sun and the spectacle of these ruins.
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The eloquence of the page, which bears the name of the Roman emperor Nero, who was in power between 54 and 68, particularly caught the attention of Igor Boni, leader of the microsocial-liberal Radical Italiani party, which organized a press conference on July 1 on the banks of a shriveled Tiber. “In Rome, 140 mm of rain has fallen to date, compared to 430 mm on average: these are figures from countries like Algeria and Tunisia,” warned the politician near the remains of the Pons Neronianus. Discarded bicycles and abandoned electric scooters offered their filthy bodies on the surface of the lowered waters of the Tiber in mid-July, forming nesting sites more modern than the Roman bridge.
A bridge between two eras
This ancient structure, half-submerged, not only testifies to the level of the Tiber or the severity of the drought, but also to a small misjudgment by the Roman engineers of the 1st century. Civil engineering would have chosen the site of the bridge very poorly, the remains of which correspond to the remains of pillars. “It was built on a sharp bend in a floodplain,” archaeologist Rabun Taylor of the University of Texas at Austin told LiveScience. The Pons Neronianus is located in the most prominent bend of the Tiber, in the center of Rome, near the Castel Sant’Angelo. A choice that puts stress on bridge piers and can lead to collapse.
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“That probably happened with Nero’s bridge, and it could well have happened in the mid-AD 200s, less than two centuries after his death,” Rabun Taylor said. Despite its nickname, the structure, which is not mentioned in ancient sources, is not securely linked to Nero and may have been built under his predecessor Caligula. Several pillars, preserved up to about one meter above the level of the Tiber, were demolished at the end of the 19th century to make this section of the river more navigable, reports the Castel Sant’Angelo Museum in a press release.
River navigation was also disrupted on parts of the Po in northern Italy. The region has been particularly hard hit by the drought that is ravaging the rest of the country. This heatwave has already unearthed more contemporary remains, such as the wrecks of ships that sank during World War II. The drought is threatening more than 30% of the country’s agricultural production, according to the Italian farmer’s union Coldiretti.