From tigers to tourists: Rome seeks to boost River Tiber’s appeal to visitors

The River Tiber flows through the centre of Rome

Credit: Nick Squires

For the ancient Romans, it was a vital conduit for bringing goods such as wine and olive oil from the farthest reaches of the empire, even transporting wild animals to be used for gladiatorial spectacles in the Colosseum.

Two thousand years on, a campaign has been launched to make the River Tiber navigable once again from its mouth on the Mediterranean coast to the heart of Rome.

Virginia Raggi, the city’s mayor, is to bid for €300 million from Italy’s portion of the EU Recovery Fund to fund dredging and other engineering works on the river.

She says the Tiber is under-used as a tourist attraction and wants to see environmentally friendly electric boats able to travel the 60 kilometres between the city and the river’s mouth.

“We’ve not taken advantage of the Tiber and that has been to the detriment of the city,” said Ms Raggi, from the Five Star Movement, which governs at the national level in coalition with the centre-Left Democratic Party. “This is an ambitious but realistic project.”

Pleasure boats can currently only sail upstream of the weir by Isola Tiberina island

Credit: Nick Squires

One of the main obstacles to shipping is a 6ft-high weir by Isola Tiberina, a small island in the middle of the capital, home to a maternity hospital and a basilica.

Pleasure boats can currently only operate upstream of the weir.

The fact that the river comes under the jurisdiction of several different authorities, from the regional government of Lazio to a river management entity, had not helped matters, she said.

Rome needed to follow the example of cities such as Budapest, Paris and Vienna in terms of river tourism.

“This is a project that has been discussed for 20 years or more,” said Roberto Traversi, undersecretary from the department of transport and infrastructure, which is backing the bid for European funds.

For all its historical pedigree as an artery of the Roman Empire, the Tiber has been badly neglected in modern times.

Although there is a bike path down one side, the other is largely a no-man’s-land of overgrown vegetation and encampments for homeless people, who live in tents beneath bridges. 

An American student died in 2016 after getting into an argument with an Italian man who was sleeping rough along the banks of the river.