13th-Century Flood Marker

13th-Century Flood Marker

The Tiber

Before the embankment project of the late 19th century, flooding of the Tiber river was a fact of Roman life. Built on a natural floodplain, Rome would experienced catastrophic floods at least twice per century. Waters would engulf houses and buildings, and flood fields and farms, leaving destruction, famine, and disease as they receded. While records of the floods of late antiquity survive mainly in the Liber Pontificalis, stone plaques indicating the heights and dates of floods came into use in the medieval period and exist throughout the city. The earliest surviving plaque can be found under an archway on the Via dell'Arco dei Banchi, across the river from the Castel Sant'Angelo. A marble slab is embedded in the side of the now heavily-restored archway and records the height of a flood that occurred on November 6, 1277. While the script is stylized, one can clearly make out the words Huc Tiber accessit ("To here the Tiber came") right above the line indicating the flood level.

Francesca Arcidiacono (2016)

Aldrete, Gregory S.. Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome. Baltimore, MD, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Accessed May 30, 2015. ProQuest ebrary.

Krautheimer, Richard. Rome : Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton, N.J. , Chichester: Princeton University Press, 2000. pp. 64, 237

Squatriti, Paolo. "The Floods of 589 and Climate Change at the Beginning of the Middle Ages: An Italian Microhistory." Speculum 85, no. 04 (2010): 799-826.

romanfloodmarker_2015

1200s

Via del Banco di Santo Spirito, 47, 00186 Roma RM, Italy

A marble slab is embedded in the side of the now heavily-restored archway and records the height of a flood that occurred on November 6, 1277. While the script is stylized, one can clearly make out the words Huc Tiber accessit ("To here the Tiber came") right above the line indicating the flood level.