Tiberina island

Tiberina Island (also known as Insula Tiberina, Insula Tiberis, Insula Aesculapi, Isola dei Due Ponti, Licaonia, Isola di San Bartolomeo, or simply Insula) is a river island as well as the only urban island of the Tiber, in the center of Rome.

Legend has it that the island was formed in 510 BC. from the sheaves of wheat harvested in Campo Marzio, owned by King Tarquinio the Superb, thrown into the Tiber at the time of the revolt that caused its expulsion.

Some modern studies, however, would prove that the island has origins much earlier than the event.

Little involved in the vicissitudes of the city, for this reason it hosted the temple of Aesculapius, god of medicine, whose cult was introduced in 292 BC. following a plague.

In the first half of the 1st century BC it was monumentalized in square work, parallel to the construction of the Fabricio and Cestio bridges, and of the Vicus Censorius that connected them inside, giving the island the shape of a ship (whose prow is still visible today), with blocks of travertine which cover the interior in peperino, and some decorations depicting Aesculapius with his snake and a bull's head, perhaps useful for moorings.

In the center there was an obelisk, to depict a symbolic mast, a reminder of the Roman ship that in 292 BC. from Epidaurus he brought the symbol of the god Aesculapius to Rome.

Two years earlier, in fact, some Roman officials had gone to the Greek city to visit the temple and consult the divinity following a serious plague that broke out in Rome.

The myth has it that a snake - symbol of the god - left the temple and boarded the Roman ship.

When the ship returned to Rome, the reptile descended on the island and settled there.

After the construction of the temple dedicated to the god, it is said that the plague miraculously vanished.

Map: Tiberina island