There is a bike trail that goes for miles along the bank of the Tiber River.
Emily Ogden agreed to ride with me as far North as we could get, to try and reach the ancient city of Fidenae.
We came down to the water at the Ponte Milvio. You might recognize the name because of the famous ‘Battle of the Milvian Bridge’ in 312 AD.
It was a real turning point in the history of Rome, because Maxentius lost the city to Constantine, the first Christian emperor.
The day before the battle, Constantine had a vision. He looked up at the sun and saw a cross wavering in the sky above it, with the words “Under this sign, conquer”.
His soldiers painted crosses on their shields and after a decisive victory, Constantine began his conversion to Christianity.
Maxentius had destroyed the Bridge so that Constantine’s Army could not cross it. But when his soldiers were routed in the battle, many of them died trying to escape back across the river. Maxentius himself was found washed up on the bank of the Tiber the next day.
We passed by a few more bridges,
and health clubs.
In fact, that is what occupies most of the property along the water; health clubs.
We biked by an encampment of Roma Gypsies. Their mobile settlement has been here for years.
Emily kept spotting Sirens, and we could hear them along the path. When I tried to take pictures of the birds, their tiny yellow bodies blended in perfectly with the trees.
The bike trail follows the course of the river, and you can always see it winding along beside the path.
“I have been in one city or another for so long that I actlualy feel like this is a trip to the country.” said Emily.
Although the area is dotted with agriculture,
I wouldn’t describe the scenery as exactly bucolic.
Still, it has a kind of scrappy charm,
like wildfloweres growing in an empty parking lot.
In places like this you get the feeling that there is pavement under everything.
Suddenly we were greeted by the most awful smell.
A single row of burnt looking trees provided thin cover for a massive sewage treetment plant.
Across the water was a large institutional development. “…perhaps for the olfactory impaired.” suggested Emily.
We saw a broken down building with an old painted sign that said ‘Carraige Factory’. “Do you think in 500 years the American Academy will come out and study this?” I wondered.
“Who knows what scholarship will even be like in 500 years.” Emily said. She had been explaining earlier how online searchable databases are changing how Universities think about research. And we talked about the fragility of computer data. Maybe digital archeology will replace actual digging.
“Sometimes I worry about my notes.” said Emily. “I would like those to be around for a long time.”
Emily is working on a doctoral thesis about Franz Mesmer.
Across the water is Castel Giubileo and the site of the ancient city of Fidenae. I read that they have reconstructed a small iron age hut there that you can visit.
We crossed over the dam,
but found that contemporary Fidenae is impassible without a car.
There was nowhere to go but back to the dam, so we biked down in to explore.
Huge amounts of water were rushing through the dam. The elevation drops 50 feet and we could see small figures fishing in the roaring current. Being under the highway close to all that water was like being underneath the infrastructure of some futuristic city.
Even the graffiti on the highway was backwords to us, having been drawn from the street on the other side.
All around you could see signs of the flood that happened this winter, and we kept wondering what it was like up here when the water was so high.
On the way back we passed a heard of goats.
Their shepherd moved them over to let us pass.
At Ponte Milvio we decided to bike right down along the river.
Here there is a big flat sidewalk that runs the length of the Tiber on each side.
It is a great place to enter the city, passing under the bridges one by one.
It was late afternoon and there were people exercising in rowboats.
The banks were lined with signs of wreckage from the flood.
Many of the restaraunts and clubs were swept away by the currents,
and pinned up against the bridges.
Around the Ponte Sisto we saw an art project by Christian Jones: hundreds of silver she-wolves.
It reminded me to look for a piece she made a few years ago. You can still make out the huge she-wolves that she painted into to bank of the Tiber by cleaning the stone back to white.
Then we remembered something else we wanted to check out in Trastevere. There is a new bar that serves all kinds of beer, and that is something we both miss from the United States.
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