GANGA MOTHER TIBERINUS PATER - Ambasciata d'Italia ...

GANGA MOTHERTIBERINUS PATER

Sacred rivers, streams of knowledgephotographic journey along Ganges and Tiber rivers

Giancarlo Cammerini

copyright 2021CULTURE SRLS

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EMBASSY OF ITALY - NEW DELHI

The exhibition and this catalog were sponsored by the Italian Embassy in New Delhi on the occasion of the celebration of the Italian Research Day on April 15, 2021.

GANGA MOTHERTIBERINUS PATERSacred rivers, streams of knowledgephotographic journey along Ganges and Tiber rivers

Giancarlo Cammerini

FIRST CONTACTReproduction of the Tabula Peutingeriana -“The Peutinger Map” - is an illustrated itinerarium (ancient Roman road map) showing the lay-out of the cursus publicus, the road network of the Roman Empire.

The map is a 13th-century parchment copy of a possible Roman orig-inal. The Tabula shows the entire Roman Empire, the Near East and India, indicating also the Ganges river.

INTRODUCTION

Water is sacred - it is always important to remember this. We all owe our life on planet Earth to water. Although only a small portion of water flows in riverbeds on the planet’s surface, all the great civilizations were born along the banks of rushing water.

India and Italy share many similarities, among these are their mythic riv-ers still treasured as national symbols, from where the foundations of their historic origins emerged.

While the Ganges is called Ma or Mother, the Tiber was addressed as Pater or Father. Both rivers exude a sense of the sacred, merging the harmony of landscape and culture with the life rhythms of its people. Through my lens, I have tried to represent these two dramatic riverine worlds in this photographic exhibition.

The Ganges is the holiest of all India’s rivers. On its banks, it is possible to reconcile modernity with rituals and thoughts that have deep and an-cient roots. In earlier ages, Western culture also held a sacred vision of the natural world. However today only India is traversed by rivers that are still viewed as “gods”. This is the gift which Indian spirituality offers the world.

The Tiber River, flows down Central Italy like a backbone, finally reaching Rome, the eternal city. Along its journey to the sea, through Tuscany and Umbria, traces of the sacred are found everywhere as it passes many sites of the Christian faith where great saints like St. Francis and St. Ben-edict once walked and meditated.This river’s sacred aura also radiates throughout grand landscapes of art created by the Renaissance masters such as Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo.

When standing on the Ganges, the view is captured not by the waters of the river but by the multitudes moving along its banks. While along the course of the Tiber one is dazzled by the concentration of cultural herit-age. So in this work the figure is, for the Ganges it is humanity praying, for the Tiber it is the cultural heritage made up of cities, museums, land-scapes.

These millennial waters of the Ganges and the Tiber have shaped the cul-tural identity of two worlds that, like rivers, flow endlessly to meet each other symbolically in a great sea of humanity.

Giancarlo Cammerini

THE GANGES

When they had bathed felt cleaned: not just bodily but in spirit.The Ramayana, describing a day by day the holy rivers.

The goddess Ganga stands on her mount, the makara, with a kumbha, a full pot of water, in her hand, while an attendant holds a parasol over her. Terracotta, Ahichatra, Uttar Pradesh, Gupta, 5th century, now in National Museum, New Delhi

GANGES

The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are inter wined her racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India’s agelong culture and civilization, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. She reminds me of the show-covered peaks and the deep valleys of the Himalayas, which I have loved so much, and of the rich and vast plains below, where my life and work have been cast.Smiling and dancing in the morning sunlight, and dark and gloomy and full of mystery as the evening shadows fall, a narrow, slow and graceful stream in winter, and a vast roaring thing during the monsoon, broad-bos-omed almost as the sea, and with something of the seas’ power to destroy, the Ganga has been to me a symbol and a memory of the past of India, running into the present and flowing on to the great ocean of the future.

Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India, in his will, 1954

MOUNT SHIVILINGAt the foot of the mountain lies the Gomukh glacier. The word Gomukh literally means “Mouth of a Cow.”

BAGHIRATI VALLEYThe first steps of the river near Gangotri

SACRED WATERThe water of the Ganges is so precious that it is kept as a relic. According to popular belief, the water of the Ganges is miraculous because it remains pure for years without deteriorating.

GANGOTRIA Sadhu meditates on the banks of the Bhagirathi River, one of the four main branches of the Ganges.

GANGOTRI TEMPLEThe village of Gangotri, the destination of millions of pilgrims every year, lies on the banks of the Baghirati River and is surrounded by a forest of deodora, Himalayan cedars.

KEDARNATHUpper valley of the Ganges. The temple is one of the four main sites of the Indian pil-grimage known as Chota Char Dham. Thou-sands of pilgrims visit it every year on foot, on mules, carried on the shoulders of sher-pas and now also by helicopter.

GAURIKUNDFrom the village of Gaurikund, pilgrims set out for Kedarnath, up the Mandakini river valley.

MANDAKINI VALLEYFrom the village of Sonprayag, pilgrims set out for Kedarnath, up the Mandakini river valley.

BAGHIRATI VALLEY Baghirati valley near Arsil.

ALAKANANDA VALLEYTerraced rice fields along the slopes of the Alakananda River valley near Uttarkashi. Cultivat-ed areas alternate with gorges and waterfalls, and small villages where life follows a course in harmo-ny with the seasons.

MANDAKINI VALLEYMoments of joy of children playing village anthem in the Mandakini Valley

UTTARKASHIThe photo was taken in 1984 with my Minox camera, on my first trip to the source of the Ganges, much has changed in those 27 years, the village of Uttarkashi at the time had few houses, now it has over 20,000 inhabitants.

DEVPRAYAG Pilgrims take a dip at the con-fluence of the Bhagirathi and Alakananda rivers. From this point on the river takes the name of Ganges.

RAGHUNATHJI TEMPLE This temple is located just above the holy confluence of Devprayag where the two rivers Alaknanda and Bhagirathi meet and take on the name of Ganges, most sa-cred river in India.The temple has a long flight of steps leading up and is believed to be thousands of years old.

RAGHUNATHJI TEMPLE The priest there pointed out rocks with inscriptions which he claimed was Brahmi script. Lord Rama is the main deity and there is an idol of the saint Ramanujar who is said to have prayed here.

TEHRIA woman maintains a nursery to reforest and consolidate the slopes upstream of the Tehri Dam.

TEHRIThe lake formed as a result of the construction of the Terhi dam, one of the largest in India.

ASHARMRishikesh is the main yoga cen-tre in India, the town is a con-centration of ashrams. One of the most important is the centre Parmarth Niketan Ashram led by , H.H. Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, who has also set up an association for the protection of the waters of the River Ganges. Since the 1960s, a continuous flow of young people sensitive to the spiritual call has been com-ing to the town on the Ganges to participate in the activities of the ashrams.

RISHIKESHSadhu smoking a dose of Indian hemp, a mild drug popular in the Him-alayan foothills.

RISHIKESHSadhu takes his daily ritual bath.

RISHIKESH

LAKSHMAN JHOOLA Pilgrims on the Lakshman Jhoola bridge. The 240-metre long bridge was made of rope until 1889. According to the legend, Lakshman, Rama’s brother, crossed the sacred river on a liana at this precise point to go to the other bank to meditate. The episode is part of the Ramayana, the sacred text recounting the epic deeds of the god Rama. In the background is the thirteen-storey temple dedicated to Shiva.

HARIDWARHaridwar presents a kaleidoscope of Indian culture and development. It is additionally a passage for the Chota Char Dham (the four principal pilgrim destinations in Uttarakhand viz, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri).

From this location onwards, the Ganges meets the great plain.

HARIDWARThe pilgrimage of the sadhus takes place with great simplicity.They sleep and eat on the road, living on the offerings of the pil-grims.The saffron-coloured robes they wear signify that they have been symbolically washed in the fertile blood of Parvati, Shiva’s consort. The three horizontal yellow stripes on their foreheads are the symbol of Shiva, the tripundraka.

HARIDWARThe culminating moment of a cel-ebration in worship of the Linga, which consists of an oval-shaped object, a phallic symbol consid-ered to be a form of Shiva. The use of this symbol as an object of wor-ship is a timeless tradition in India.

In metaphysical terms, it repre-sents the form of the transcendent Absolute without beginning or end, or the form of the formal relative merging with the formless Abso-lute, or Brahman.

After the ceremony the statue will be thrown into the waters of the Ganges.

HARIDWARHighlight of the Aarti ceremony. Crowds throng the Hat ki Pairi, the main ghat of Haridwar. Repetitive chanting music drifts through the air and pilgrims deposit lit candles on the water, which are then swept away by the rushing river current.

HARIDWARColoured powders used to decorate the face and head during rituals, and a plate with offerings.

ROORKEEIn April 1842, the British East India Company, after disastrous floods, decided to build a se-ries of canals with the double function of lim-iting floods and irrigating the vast plain. They were monumental works, at Roorkee the canal is 25 metres higher than the origi-nal river. When the canal was formally opened on 8 April 1854, its main channel was 560 km long, its branches 492 km and its various trib-utaries over 4,800 km. Many Hindu priests in Haridwar initially ob-jected because they believed that the waters of the sacred river Ganges would be impris-oned, so a opening was left in the dam from where the water could flow freely.

IN TRAVELThe most important form of transport in India is the train. The pilgrims move to large gathering places like Haridwar and then start their pilgrimage.

AGRAThe Taj Mahal is located on the banks of the Yamuna River after it passes through New Delhi and before it flows into the Ganges near Prayagraj.

YAMUNA RIVER All along the rivers of India, the world’s most populous democracy, it is customary to wash clothes.

YAMUNA RIVER India’s other sacred river is the Yamuna, it is also the river that flows through the capital New Del-hi, like the Ganges it suffers from turbulent development.

PRAYAGRAJA group of pilgrims returning from the precise point where the Ganges collects the waters of the Yamuna.This confluence is considered the most important of the entire course.This is also where the mythological and invisible river Saraswati, men-tioned in the sacred Veda scrip-tures, would arrive.

PRAYAGRAJMillions of pilgrims are walking at night to be on the banks of the Ganges at first light.

PRAYAGRAJSangam is the place where the Yamuna merges with the Ganges and the mystical Saraswati, near the city of Prayagraj. This is also one of the sites of Kumbh Mela, the most crowded public Hindu festival. In 2018, more than 50 million people gathered here during a month-long celebration.

KUMBH MELAA medium tries to act as an inter-mediary between life and death with supposed supernatural entities.

KUMBH MELAThe Kumbh Mela is the largest reli-gious gathering in the world, but it is also a huge folk festival, a meeting point for ethnic groups from all over India.

KUMBH MELA KUMBH MELA

KUMBH MELA

KUMBH MELA

VARANASISurya Namaskar (sun salutation) on the dry banks of the Ganges River.

VARANASIVaranasi is considered one of the oldest and most sacred inhabited cities in the world. The sacred fire used for cremations at the Manikarnika ghat, on the banks of the river, has been kept alive by its guardians, gener-ation after generation, for some 3,000 years.

VARANASIThe ritual called Aarti is a thousand-year-old custom performed on the ghat in Varanasi: a priest celebrates the daily sun ritual using a brazier that he repeatedly raises to the sky. The fire has a symbolic meaning of purification.

VARANASI VARANASI

VARANASICows, a sacred animal for Hindus, are ever-present along the ghats.

VARANASI

VARANASI VARANASI

VARANASIVaranasi , also known as Benares, is considered the holiest of the seven sacred cities in Hinduism and Jainism, and played an important role in the development of Buddhism. It is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and the oldest in India.

The city of Varanasi is unique in the architectural, artistic and religious expres-sions of traditional Indian culture and is, even today, a living example of this cul-ture. The culture as seen and lived here is a rare heritage asset for Indians and for the citizens of the world, contributing to the cultural, philosophical and intellectual knowledge, of Indian culture and the cultural community of the world.

In the city of Varanasi have been found, underneath the sterile deposits of about 4m, microlithic tools associated with a kind of Red Ware, datable to the 4th and 3rd millennium BCE. The city has two main historic remnants of a holy past: the first one being Sarnath where Buddha gave his first sermon, “Turning the wheel of law” in ca.528 BCE. and the second one being the Rajghat Plateau, where the archaeological findings and the C14 dating of some of the wares excavated from the earliest level confirm the existence of urban settlements in the period during 800-500 BCE. Both these sites have been included in the heritage zones identified for nomination to the UNESCO heritage list.

VARANASI VARANASI

PATNAAarti sacred ceremony performed on the banks of the Ganges at sunset.

BODHGAYAThe statue of the Buddha inside the Mahabodhi temple erected on the site where Siddhartha Gautama sat under a ficus plant before attaining enlightenment.

PATNA

KOLKATAThe Hindu religion considers the Ganges as a goddess. Ceremo-nies of thanksgiving and immer-sion of idols in the waters are commonly performed all along the river.

HOWRAH BRIDGEThe bridge is one of four on the Hooghly River and is a famous symbol of Kolkata. The other bridges are the Vidyas-agar Setu, the Vivekananda Setu and the newly built Nivedita Setu. It weathers the storms of the Bay of Bengal region, carrying a daily traffic of approximately 100,000 vehicles and possibly more than 150,000 pedestrians, easily mak-ing it the busiest cantilever bridge in the world.

KOLKATAA temple overlooking the river. A woman, at the first light of dawn, pours the newly collected sacred water to the deity as a sign of homage and prayer.

MALLICK GHAT - FLOWERS MARKET

MALLICK GHAT - FLOWERS MARKET

MALLICK GHAT - FLOWERS MARKET

KOLKATA - JORASANKOJorasanko Thakur Bari is the ancestral home of the Tagore family. It is the house in which the poet and first non-European Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore was born.

Tagore is still the symbol of culture and cosmopolitanism in India.

SANTINIKETANIn 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan where he founded an experimental school that later became a famous university where, among others, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and Prime Minister Indira Ghandi studied.

BAULBauls are are a group of mystic minstrels, their influence on the culture of Bengal is considera-ble. In 2005, the Baul tradition of Bangladesh was included in the list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

SUNDARBANSAfter more than 2500 km the Gan-ges meets the ocean where the delta disintegrates into a thousand small islands populated by fisher-men and the majestic Bengal tiger.

SUNDARBANSThe vast mangrove forest and canals of the Sunderban are home to the fearsome Bengal Tiger, yet there are many villages on the various islands of the delta that say they are farming and fishing. This is one of the most sensitive areas to climate change and ris-ing oceans.

GANGASAGARStatue of the goddess Ganga on the beach of Sagar Island. The goddess is depicted as a voluptuous, attractive-looking woman holding a conch and a chakra in her hand. She is seated on a hybrid animal, the Makara, with a mixed body between that of a crocodile and a fish.

GANGASAGAR The Island is Sagar or Gangasagar island, where the Ganga meets Bay of Bengal. This island is one of the most popular among the Hindu pilgrimage sites. Pilgrims from all parts of India visit this holy island each year on Makar Sankranti day. This day marks the first day of the sun's tran-sit into Makara rashi (Capricorn), marking the end of the winter month (in the Indian calen-dar) with the winter solstice and the start of longer days. The Makara is symbolized as a mythical crea-ture, akin to the Gangetic Dolphin, imagined as an associate of Ganga the goddess.The pilgrims believe that bathing in the es-tuary on Makar Sankranti will serve to wash away all their sins. After bathing in the estuary, pilgrims offer a Puja at Kapil Muni temple.

BAY OF BENGALFamily praying

GANGASAGARMakar Sankranti day

GANGASAGARMakar Sankranti day

GANGASAGARMakar Sankranti day celebrations continue into the night.

BAY OF BENGALThe sun goes down, it is time for prayer. The Ganges ends its course here, but its waters continue to flow unceasingly, merging with those of the ocean.

TIBERINUS PATERAncient Roman allegory of Tiber River in the Capitol square, Rome. The twins Romulus and Remus, mytical founders of Rome, who were saved from Tiber’s waters, play in the left corner with the she-wolf that fed them.

TIBER

Allora Enea dal mare vede un ingente bosco.In mezzo ad esso con corso ameno il Teverecon salti rapidi e biondo di molto limosi getta in mare(Virgilio, Eneide)W

TIBER MAP The course of the Tiber at the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican museum, based on drawings by friar and geographer Ig-nazio Danti, 1580–1583

THE APPENNINE Central Italy is criss-crossed by the Apennine mountain range with peaks of around 2000 metres.

TIBER SPRINGThe source of the Tiber is located on Monte Fu-maiolo at an altitude of 1,268 metres, in the Ap-ennine mountain range.During the 1930s, Benito Mussolini had an an-tique marble Roman column built at the point where the river rises, inscribed QUI NASCE IL FIUME SACRO AI DESTINI DI ROMA (“Here is born the river / sacred to the destinies of Rome”).

THE FORESTThe mountains where the sources of the river Tiber are located, like the entire Apennine range, are covered by a monumental forest of beeches.

PIEVE S. STEFANOThe Tiber at the beginning of its journey through a small village with a rare and valuable museum.

The Small Diary Museum is an in-tense multisensory itinerary created to tell the story of the National Diary Archive in Pieve Santo Stefano, which was created with the aim of preserv-ing memory and giving space to the thousands of autobiographical texts, diaries, letters and private writings preserved in the National Diary Ar-chive. More than 7300 memories of Italians have been made available to visitors through the use of multimedia tools.

MICHELANGELO’S BIRTHPLACEMichelangelo Buonarroti, one of the great art-ists of all time, was born in this house on 6 March 1475.

FRANCISCAN SANCTUARY - LA VERNA.The Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna, locat-ed in the Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Faltero-na and Campigna national park, is famous for being the place where Saint Francis of Assi-si is said to have received the stigmata on 16 September 1224. Built on the southern side of Mount Penna at an altitude of 1128 metres, the sanctuary - a destination for many pilgrims - houses numerous chapels and places of prayer and meditation, as well as various points of considerable religious importance.

TIBERIN VALLEYThe Tiber comes out of the mountain slopes and meets the Tiber valley plain in the municipalities of Anghiari and Sansepolcro.

MONTAUTO CASTLEThe castle of Montauto is located on the Upper Ti-ber Valley, near Anghiari, in the province of Arezzo. Seat of the lords of the county of the same name, until 1815 it was a mediated imperial fief. St. Francis of Assisi stopped there several times and, in 1203, gave his cassock to the feudal lord Alberto II Barbolani, which was kept in the chapel of the fortress until 1503.

PIERO DELLA FRANCESCAThe Resurrection is a fresco painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, painted in the 1460s in the Palazzo della Residenza in the town of San-sepolcro, Tuscany, Italy.

VILLA BARBOLANAThe Barbolana is a unique example of a fortified villa near Anghiari.The original typological and volumetric layout, with the exceptional development in height of the central tower and the uncommon geographical position make it an emerging and determining element in the landscape of the Valtiberina.

MONTERCHIA Madonna del Parto (“Madonna of Parturition”) is an iconic depiction of the Virgin Mary shown as pregnant.The most famous work showing this subject is a fresco painting by the Italian Re-naissance master Piero della Francesca, finished around 1460. It is housed in the Museo della Madonna del Parto of Monterchi.

UMBERTIDEThe town, skirted to the west by the Tevere, in the historic centre stands the mighty tower of the medieval fortress designed in 1374.

CITTA’ DI CASTELLOIn this section, at the edge of the riv-er there are intensive cultivation of tobacco that need a lot of water.

PERUGIAThis area has always been devoted to agriculture with the presence of many farms. The abbey of San Sal-vatore di Montecorona would have been founded, according to the tradi-tion, in 1008, by Saint Romualdo who realized a simple hermitage there.

ASSISIThe Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis is the patron saint of Italy, many of the paths he traveled to go to Rome wind along the axis of the Tiber River.

FORELLO GORGESThe river flows through wild gorg-es upstream of the Corbara dam, between the ancient cities of Todi and Orvieto in the Umbria region.

TODITodi is the birthplace of the Fran-ciscan poet Jacopone da Todi

CORBARA LAKELake Corbara is an artificial lake in central Italy, formed with the con-struction in the 1960s of the Cor-bara reservoir on the Tiber River. Together with the surrounding ter-ritories, it is part of the Tiber River Park, a protected natural area in Umbria.

ALVIANOThe wetland of Alviano originates from an artificial dam along the Ti-ber, on the border between Umbria and Lazio. The area is now protect-ed as a natural reserve.

CASTELLUCCIO DI NORCIAThe plain of Castelluccio di Norcia is an important place for religion in It-aly. In fact, Saint Benedict was born in Norcia in 480. With him, monas-ticism and hermeticism were born in Europe, main achievement, his “Rule of Saint Benedict”, contains a set of rules for his monks to follow.

MARMORE WATERFALLThe Nera river, one of the main tributaries of the Tiber, receives the waters of the Velino river through a spectacular 165-metre-high waterfall.

FIUME VELINOOne of the most significant tributaries of the Tiber is the Velino River, which flows into the Nera River and forms the Marmore Falls.

ORTEThe town of Orte overlooks the Tiber River.

TRANSHUMANCEThe countryside along the Tiber, especially in summer, has been frequented for millennia by flocks of sheep that once came through transhumance, included in 2019 by UNESCO in the Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

ORVIETOThe Gothic façade of the Orvieto Cathedral is one of the great mas-terpieces of the Late Middle Ages.

CAPRAROLAVilla Farnesina is located in the an-cient region of Tuscia. In one of the rooms is the famous “Room of the World Map”, displaying the whole known world as it was in 1574 when the frescoes were completed.

OTRICOLIFor many years the Tiber was a very im-portant waterway, a place where jour-neys began and a place where journeys ended.

OTRICOLIHistorical re-enactment on the banks of the Tiber near the ancient city of Ocriculum which during the Roman period was an important site for trade in central Italy.

The event is organised by the ‘Ocriculum AD 168’ Association, which takes care of the historical and scenic profile.

OCRICULUMEvery year, on the 7th of June, the urban praetor organised the Ludi Piscatorii, celebrated by the fish-ermen’s guild in honour of the god Tiberinus, the personification of the Tiber. It was the festival of those who worked and lived in close con-tact with the river. The fish caught on this feast day were dedicated to Tiberinus and the god Vulcan.

OCRICULUMThe praetor with his escort goes to the olive oil port to welcome the ‘landing’ of the sailors on the oc-casion of the Ludi Piscatorii’.

OCRICULUMThe sailors and fishermen of the harbour disembark from their boats decorated with flowers and wreaths and in a festive procession carry baskets with fish to offer to the gods for the ‘Ludi Piscatorii’. The praetor and his escort close the procession.

MONTERCHIOn reaching the sacred place of the Port, the sailors’ gifts are giv-en to the priest, who, invoking the protection and benevolence of the deities, offers them as gifts.

SABINA REGIONThe Tiber crosses the plain that divides the historic re-gions of Sabina and Etruria, whose populations contrib-uted greatly to the develop-ment of ancient Rome.

FARFA RIVERBefore reaching Rome, the Tib-er meets the Farfa River, creating an environment extremely rich in biodiversity. In ancient times, this region was a crossroads of culture and art and for centuries was un-der the control of the important Christian abbey of Farfa.

TIBERThe Tiber River before entering the capital city

ROMEAccording to legend, the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC on the banks of the Tiber. At that time the sacred role of the river was ex-pressed through the cult of the Pa-ter Tiberinus (Father Tiber), whose temple was located in the centre of the city.

The Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as Castel Sant’Angelo.It was initially commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mau-soleum for himself and his family. The building was later used by the popes as a fortress and castle.

BRIDGESRome is full of monumental bridges, the first ones you come across are Ponte Fla-minio and Ponte Milvio.

ROME, VATICAN CITYRome is the centre of Christianity and one of the places with the high-est concentration of museums and artworks in the world. Millions of tourists flock to the Tiber embank-ment between St Peter’s Basilica and Castel Sant’Angelo every year.

THE GANGES IN ROMEPiazza Navona. The Fountain of the rivers realized in 1651 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.One of the four marble giants of the celebrated monument is an allegory of the river Ganges which holds in one hand an oar to symbolize navigability.

ROME, PONTE SISTOThe Tiber in Rome is crossed by many ancient and modern bridges. One of them, Ponte Sisto, connects the characteristic district of Traste-vere to the lively Campo dei Fiori.

ROME

ROMEIn recent years the Tiber has once again been rediscovered for its en-vironmental and cultural values. Ca-noeing along its waters near the city of Fiumicino is one of the possible activities. At the end of its 450 km long course, the river flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

ROMEPorto fluviale is one of the districts of Rome after which the river heads towards the mouth.

TIBERIn the final part of its course the riv-er shows all its problems of pollution and neglect.

TRAJAN HARBOURPortus was a large artificial harbour of Ancient Rome. Sited on the north bank of the north mouth of the Tiber, on the Tyrrhenian coast, it was es-tablished by Claudius and enlarged by Trajan to supplement the nearby port of Ostia

OSTIAThe city of Ostia was built by the Romans at the mouth of the Tiber. Today it is one of the most famous and richest archaeological sites in Italy.

FIUMICINO

FIUMICINO

FIUMICINOThe city of Fiumicino is adjacent to the Leonardo Da Vinci airport. Here ends the course of the river Tiber, which through the estuary plunges into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

12 april 2021