PONTE ROTTO AT ROME, ANCIENTLY THE PONS PALATINUS OR SENATORIUS
There has been so much controversy over the antique bridges at Rome that the steadiest head becomes giddy while reading Palladio, Becker, Bunsen, Piranesi, Sir William Smith, and other experts. Perhaps we may be on safe ground when we step delicately on tiptoe into the historic environment of the Pons Palatinus, a bridge which seems to have been erected in the year B.C. 179.[78] A good part of this bridge was rebuilt in the time of Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85), but in 1598 it was wrecked by a terrible flood, and people began to speak of it as the Ponte Rotto, or broken bridge. From Palladio’s book on architecture, printed at Venice in 1570, we learn that the Pons Palatinus, or Senatorius, was known also as the Ponte Santa-Maria, so Rome must have been horrified when a classic bridge recently dedicated to the Virgin was overthrown by a spate, which spared the Pons Cestius and the Pons Fabricius.
The arches of this bridge were rather more than twenty-four metres in span, and their large archivolts were boldly prominent. The piers, about eight metres thick, were protected by angular cutwaters, and above each cutwater was a tall niche flanked by pilasters whose capitals touched the broad cornice that framed the spandrils in a vigorous manner. Each spandril was ornamented with a sea-horse carved in relief; and this decoration was foiled by the plain, deep parapets whose horizontal lines were diversified here and there by a projection. Brangwyn’s drawing of the Ponte Rotto gives all the architectural character, and we see that this bridge was a great Roman citizen, manly and brave and noble. Further, when we speak of any bridge as virile as this one arch, we have a right to use masculine pronouns, “he” and “his” and “him.” The trivial word “it” is a feeble neutrality that belongs to a great many bridges, both ancient and modern; but a Cæsarian achievement like the Pons Palatinus, or the Pont du Gard, or the Puente Trajan at Alcántara, takes rank among the rare deeds that do honour to a splendid manhood; and this we should recognise in our pronouns.
Palladio says that in his time, from 1518 to 1580, three other bridges over the Tiber, at Rome, were in good preservation. Let us take a glance at them:—
1. The Pons Ælius, called then, as now, the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, built by Ælius Hadrianus, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138, and who erected his bridge as a passage over the Tiber to his own mausoleum, which forms the groundwork of the present castle of St. Angelo. An earlier bridge connected the Vatican and its neighbourhood with that part of the city which Caligula and Nero had beautified with gardens; and remains of it still exist near S. Spirito. The date of its disappearance I do not know, but in the days of Procopius, the sixth century of the Christian era, the Pons Ælius was the only communication between the city and the Vatican district. Either legend or truth says that the Ælius had a bronze cover upheld by forty-two pillars. If this gleaming roof ever existed (and writers should be afraid of pretty details in ancient history), it must have been damaged very much when the parapets were broken down in the fifteenth century. This accident was caused by a great crowd that lost control of itself on the bridge, when thronging to St. Peter’s to receive the Pope’s benediction. At last the parapets gave way, and ninety-two persons were either drowned or crushed to death. Long afterwards, as we know, Giovanni L. Bernini (1598-1680) designed balustrades of iron and stone, but dwarfed them with ten huge statues commissioned by Pope Clement IX ([p. 324]). The figures of St. Peter and St. Paul at the city entrance were put up by Clement VII. The bridge itself—or himself, shall we say?—has a technical inspiration akin to that of the Pons Palatinus; but there is less ornament, and above the cutwaters, instead of tall niches, we find rectangular pillars with plain capitals, upon which Bernini erected pedestals for his “breezy angels.”
2. The Pons Fabricius, connecting Rome on the city side with the Insula Tiberina. In very early times this island in the Tiber was united to each bankside by a bridge, and hence it was called Inter Duos Pontes. The present Pons Fabricius was either founded or restored by L. Fabricius, curator viarum in B.C. 62, as appears from the inscription on it, and from Dion Cassius. It is mentioned by Horace as a bridge very attractive to suicides:—
... jussit sapientem pascere barbam
Atque a Fabricio non tristem ponte reverti.