[image ALT: Much of my site will be useless to you if you've got the images turned off!]
mail: Bill Thayer 
[image ALT: Cliccare qui per una pagina di aiuto in Italiano.]
Italiano

[Link to a series of help pages]
Help
[Link to the next level up]
Up
[Link to my homepage]
Home

Spoleto: The Ponte Sanguinario


[image ALT: missingALT]

One of the two visible arches of this Roman bridge
at the foot of Spoleto.

Handsomely built of squared travertine blocks towards the end of the 1c B.C., it was part of Augustus's great restoration of the Via Flaminia, then 200 years old. The brick wall at the back is modern, of course.

All three arches made it thru the ages, only to be very sadly "displayed". The Tessino river no longer flows under the bridge, but twenty meters to the south; one arch has been impossible to excavate, and the other two have wound up buried in a hard-to‑find dark and exiguous concrete pit under the piazza della Vittoria: a very busy and very ugly traffic circle. (The weight of the piazza accounts for the modern brick supporting wall you see across the arch.)

Spoleto in general is a bit of a disappointment; yet, unburied and landscaped, this attractive Roman bridge would be the first thing the visitor saw on arriving in town: what a difference that would make!


[image ALT: Link to a help screen on how to use clickmaps of Roman roads on my site.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in another window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in another window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in another window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	
[image ALT: Opens a page on this place, in this window.]
	An inactive area of this clickmap. If you click here, you will stay exactly where you are.


[image ALT: Valid HTML 4.01.]

Page updated: 7 Dec 17