Anthropogenic Impact on Water Disasters: the Long-Term History Between Rome and its Territory

The city of Rome and its landscape still show an extraordinary stratification of traces of the past. As a river city, its birth and development have been conditioned at all times by the natural and geographical characteristics, in particular by the presence of the Tiber River. A multitude of data coming from historical and archaeological records allowed to highlight how to the conflictual relationship between Rome and the Tiber have contributed also human activities. Actually, from the very funding of the city the landscape have been extensively and deeply manipulated and domesticated in order to establish an artificial balance between the settlement and the territory, and to address if not prevent, weather fancies and natural disasters linked to the Tiber. The aim of the research have been to understand if, even in ancient times, human activity influenced territory resilience in facing stresses related to climatic variations, contributing at various levels to speed up or slow down, but also increase or contain its effects.