Which river flows through the ancient city of Rome?

The Tiber is the river that flows through the ancient city of Rome.

Known as the Tiber in English and Tevere in Italian, it rises in the Apennine Mountains and runs generally westward to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Rome developed beside the river, and the Tiber helped connect the settlement to inland areas and coastal trade. The city’s traditional founding hills lie east of the river, while the river island of Isola Tiberina provided an important crossing point.

Ancient Roman writers associated the river with the city’s origins and legends. One story says that the infant twins Romulus and Remus were abandoned on the Tiber before being rescued by a she-wolf. The Arno flows through Florence, and the Po is Italy’s longest river, so both can be confused with the Tiber in broad questions about Italian history. Flood-control works and embankments significantly changed Rome’s riverfront after the nineteenth century.