The Fabricio bridge is the oldest in Rome
Today we will go to virtually visit one of the most loved bridges in Rome: the Fabricio bridge, the oldest in the capital, in its original composition, and one of the best preserved. It is located on the Tiber Island, in one of the most beautiful and romantic places in the city. A strange legend is linked to this bridge, let’s see what it is.
It even dates back to 62 BC. and was built to replace an older wooden structure.
The structure is also known as the Ponte dei Quattro Capi (or Pons Judaeorum) and, another peculiarity, it is one of the two bridges in Rome that does not directly connect the opposite banks of the river. Just like the nearby Cestio bridge, which in fact connects the Tiber Island with one of the two banks, the left one, at Lungotevere De ‘Cenci.
The Fabricio bridge is very well preserved and is the oldest bridge in the capital existing in its original composition. It measures 62 meters in length and 5.5 in width.
The bridge is formed by two lowered arches, with a height of twenty-four and a half meters, resting on a median pylon with a spur-shaped base on the upstream side, but with a rounded shape towards the valley; a six meter wide arch opens above the pylon, with the aim of relieving the pressure of the water during river floods.
At the two ends there were two small arches of three and a half meters wide, but today they are buried. The bridge inside is made of tuff spur stone, while the outside is made of travertine. The part made up of bricks, on the other hand, dates back to a seventeenth-century restoration.
In the four arches there are four inscriptions that testify to the construction by Lucio Fabricio, a curator of the streets, in 62 BC. The bridge was restored by the consuls Marco Lollio and Quinto Lepido in 23 (we read in a smaller inscription on the two sides of one of the arches) because it was damaged by a large flood of the Tiber.
On the bridge there are some four-faced herms, depicting four-faced Janus which probably served for balustrades presumably in bronze, and which gave the most recent name to the modern structure.
Ponte Fabricio in the 16th century due to its proximity to the Ghetto was also called Ponte dei Giudei.
Another curious peculiarity is linked to a popular legend about the bridge. The name “Quattro Capi” would have been assigned due to a deep discord between four architects, who were commissioned by Pope Sixtus V to restore the structure.
The four architects, according to legend, quarreled several times for futile reasons and, for this reason, the Pope, at the end of the works, condemned them to be beheaded on the spot. He also had a monument with four heads built in a single block of marble erected in memory of their work (and their diatribe). Small detail: the four-faced herms on the bridge are two, the faces depicted would be eight. So there would have been eight architects? The mystery continues…
