Often those who, visiting Rome, look down from the Tiber walls down those waters, so to speak, "lived", do not even imagine how much the Romans swam there, and dived into them, from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early 70s of the twentieth century.
The possibility of these city bathing days was provided by the characteristic barges, moored along the city course of the river, the most popular of which was, without a doubt, that of the "Ciriola", which was moored for decades under Castel Sant'Angelo.
“Er Ciriola”, aka Luigi Rodolfo Benedetti, was the owner of an electrician's shop, and he alternated this activity with that of a river with his mythical float on the Tiber.
It was called "ciriola", a Roman word for "eel", because, just like an eel, it swam casually in the rough waters of the river, and not just for its own pleasure: it received 160 medals for the 160 lives it had snatched from the Tiber, diving with cold blood and great swimming skills to save generations and generations of daredevils and would-be suicides.
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, there are simply fantastic photographic evidence of this bathing use of the Tiber.
Here are just a few ...
