Kenyon College-in-Rome (Ohio to Italy)
With gratitude to Brad Hostetler, associate professor of art history, Kenyon College
Flooding of the Tiber: Study Abroad Activity
In the fall semester of 2024, Kenyon College’s study abroad program traveled to Rome under the direction of professor of art history, Brad Hostetler. He engaged students in the Dear Body of Water project to consider the history, power, and impact of the city’s great waterway: the Tiber River.
Over the course of the semester, students developed a relationship with the Tiber. They crossed the river daily when walking from their apartments in the Prati neighborhood. Professor Hostetler lived just a few yards away from Ponte Sant'Angelo. For this project, he wanted the class to explore some ways that the river’s regular flooding affected the city and its people, and he chose three sites in the floodplain of Campus Martius.
Campus Martius—the area encompassed between the Mausoleum of Augustus in the north, Tiber Island in the south, and Via del Corso in the east—is a floodplain.
A brief walking tour reveals traces of the river’s presence over history:
Stop #1: The class began at the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a fourteenth-century church built over the remains of a Roman temple. Displayed on the church's façade are small marble plaques that record the height to which the water rose during a particular flood (see Image 1). Most record the month and year, but one, dated to 1530, gives thanks to the Virgin Mary for sparing the city from complete ruin. These markers are not just testaments to the people who survived the destructive floods of the Tiber; they are also the “watermarks” that commemorate the Tiber’s presence at this very site, nearly 1 mile from its banks.
Santa Maria sopra Minerva (Rome), high water marks. Wikimedia Commons (2011.)
Stop #2: Walking northwest across this great floodplain—a terrain now hidden beneath the modern city—brought them to the Church of San Rocco, near Ponte Cavour and the Mausoleum of Augustus. Affixed to the southeast corner of the building is a hydrometer: a long marble plaque that runs from the building’s foundations to just below the lunette windows on the south wall (see Image 2). The markings on the hydrometer indicated the height of the water during times of flood. It was one of several such markers in the city that were used to monitor the river’s activities.
A flood level (hydrometer) for the Tiber river, along a wall of the San Rocco church, 1821, Rome, Italy. Wikimedia (2013).
Stop #3: Having explored these public documents of the Tiber’s flooding power and presence, the class walked down to the embankment walls of the Tiber River. This vantage provided perspective on infrastructure that has, since the late nineteenth century, prevented the flooding of Campus Martius. After a particularly destructive flood in 1870, large embankment walls were built, now towering over the river to confine its rising waters.
Activity: Descending the steps at this stop, coming close to the Tiber, the class experienced a completely different kind of Rome. The walls removed them from the noise and traffic of the streets above and enclosed them within a sanctuary of relative quiet next to the river. It was in this space that Professor Hostetler wanted the class to write their love letters to the Tiber. They each found their own place to sit, listen, and commune with Rome’s oldest landmark. The Tiber is older than Rome. On this date in Fall 2024, centuries after the city's founding, parakeets flew overhead and ducks swam at students' feet. After the class wrote their letters and poems to the Tiber, they reconvened as a group and shared them with each other.
Kenyon College students writing love letters to Dear Body of Water. Fall 2024. Photos by Brad Hostetler.
For more glimpses of water in Rome, scroll through photos below (by Gretchen E. Henderson visiting a previous Kenyon-in-Rome program, November 2019):
Acknowledgements
Anyone who travels to a place carries waterways. Kenyon's study abroad program in Rome interconnects watersheds, including the Kokosing River in Ohio.
Land Acknowledgment (from Kenyon College): Kenyon College acknowledges that the lands on which we live, work, celebrate, and heal are the ancestral homelands of the Miami, Lenape, Wyandotte, and Shawnee peoples, among others. The disputed Treaty of Greenville (1795) and the forced removal of Indigenous peoples from this region allowed for the founding of the College in the early 1800s. As a community, we are committed to confronting this dark past while also embracing through education and outreach the many Indigenous communities that continue to thrive in Ohio.
Kokosing River Gap Trail (above). Kokosing-Walhonding River Watershed map (below: Wikimedia 2007).
WATERSHED
Kokosing River (Ohio)—Walhonding River—Muskingum River—Ohio River—Mississippi River—Gulf of Mexico—Atlantic Ocean
Tiber River (Italy)—Tyrrhenian Sea—Mediterranean Sea—Strait of Gibraltar—Atlantic Ocean