Isola Tiberina

Legend has the island forming in 509 BC, when the people, having deposed Tarquinius Superbus, threw the king's grain store into the river in such quantity that it made an islet; geologically it rests on a compact tufa bank akin to the Capitoline's, on which the current's sands settled. Another legend: in 291 BC, during a plague, priests consulted the Sibylline books and sent a delegation to Epidaurus, cult site of Asclepius, and the envoys returned with a serpent, which leapt ashore here, so that a temple to Aesculapius was raised where it took refuge. The island was then shaped architecturally as a ship, with stern and prow and an obelisk amidships for the mast, and the travertine revetment of the prow survives at the downstream end. The church of San Bartolomeo all'Isola later rose on the Roman temple's remains, and the island's medical vocation continues with the Fatebenefratelli hospital and the Ospedale Israelitico.