Ponte Milvio

Milvio Bridge links Cardinal Consalvi Sqare to Milvian Bridge's Square. It was built along the route of the Ways Cassia and Flaminia, as a necessary step to head north. The first mention dates back to 207 BC, in relation to the return from the Battle of Metauro during the Second Punic War. The Bridge was to be still wood and its construction should be attributed to a certain Molvius. In 110-109 BC, the censor Marco Emilio Scaurus built the Bridge in stone. In 312, at the Bridge it took place the battle between Constantine and Maxentius known as the Milvian Bridge Battle (or Saxa Rubra Battle), where, according to legend, Constantine had a vision of the Cross. The Roman Bridge remain the three central arches. In 1805, Giuseppe Valadier rebuilt the arches at the ends, which in the Middle Ages were replaced by wooden drawbridges, and built a tower in the Neoclassical style. The Bridge was blown up by Garibaldi in 1849 and restored by Pope Pius IX in 1850. On this occasion there was added a statue of the sculptor Domenico Pigiani. For some time there has been the custom for young lovers, of leaving a padlock on the central lamppost of the Bridge and throw the keys into the Tiber, in imitation of the protagonists of the film "I want you", a custom now prohibited.