Identification: Tiber River The blank fragment represented a section of the Tiber, right by the horrea Lolliana (see fr. 25a). Italy's third longest river, the Tiber winds its way through Rome about 25 km before it drains into the Tyrrhenian Sea. In antiquity, only Tiber Island and perhaps eight bridges interrupted its 5.6 km long stretch between the Aurelian Walls (see LTUR V, fig. 46). For the Romans, the Tiberis (other appellations were Albula, Thybris and Tiberinus) was a provider of both bounty and frustration. It was the vital trade route between the city and the outside world; fishing in its waters provided food; and until the construction of Rome's aqueducts it was the major source of drinking water. However, the Romans struggled endlessly to keep the waterway navigable and to control the violent and frequent floods. Commercial buildings such as the horrea seen here were constructed along its banks as early as the 2nd c. BCE., and later the villas, horti, and mausolea of the upper class vied for space along the river with the apartments and cemetaries of the less fortunate (LTUR V, pp. 69-73). Remains of these buildings, especially of the commercial structures and the cemetaries and residences of the poorer classes, were largely destroyed when retaining walls were constructed on both sides of the river at the end of the 19th c. (It was during the construction of the Tiber embankment along the Via Giulia in 1888 or 1898 that a plethora of FUR fragments was discovered.) The appearance of these non-monumental structures on the Marble Plan is therefore of great importance.
Despite its important role in Rome's economy and social and political history, the Tiber is not outlined on the Marble Plan. As in this fragment, it appears simply as a blank space whose shape is discernible only through the construction that frames it on both sides. Although color was used to highlight certain buildings and streets on the Plan, there is so far no evidence to show that the river was emphasized in any way (except a possible label, Tiberis, inscribed in fr. 200b [Rodríguez-Almeida 1992, pp. 59-60]).

Significance The Renaissance drawing of this blank fragment reveals the curious convention of the Marble Plan of not outlining the edges of the Tiber. The missing piece also demonstrates the disregard with which blank fragments of the Plan were considered in the 18th c. During the attempted reconstruction of the FUR in 1742, the curators of the Capitoline Museums sawed off blank segments of several pieces in order to fit them into wooden frames (PM 1960, p. 27).

Text by Tina Najbjerg