From the banks of River Tevere (Tiber)

The River Tiber facilitated the birth of the city of Rome in 753 BC. The island Isola Tiberina in the river was considered the centre of Rome. Legend says Rome's founders, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, were abandoned on its waters, where they were rescued by the she-wolf, Lupa.

The Tiber was critically important to Roman trade and commerce, as ships could reach as far as 100 kilometres (60 mi) upriver. The Romans connected the river with a sewer system (the Cloaca Maxima) and with an underground network of tunnels and other channels, to bring its water into the middle of the city. Wealthy Romans had garden-parks or "horti" on the banks of the river in Rome up through the first century BC.

Because the river is identified with Rome, the terms "swimming the Tiber" or "crossing the Tiber" became the term for converting to Roman Catholicism.

In addition to the numerous modern bridges over the Tiber in Rome, there remain a few ancient bridges (now mostly pedestrian-only) that have survived in part (e.g., the Milvian Bridge and the Ponte Sant'Angelo) or in whole (Fabricius' Bridge). Thus flows River Tiber through the ages.