A Roman bridge that has vanished. The Ponte di Malefede was destroyed twice: once by the Second World War, and then again by the heedless urbanization that followed. Nothing remains but a photograph, taken by the scholar E. B. van Deman, which shows a structure built of peperino, the grey volcanic stone typical of the region. Its date is indeterminate, though one historian compares it to the great Augustan viaduct of the Via Appia beyond Ariccia. That comparison suggests a late Republican or early Imperial origin, but without firmer evidence, the bridge keeps its secret. Roman bridges were often robust, pragmatic affairs, designed to carry the empire’s roads across rivers and valleys. This one was not. It is a ghost, a negative space in the landscape, remembered only in a scholar’s footnote and a grainy old photograph.
Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.
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