Natural feature
Tiber Island
Tiber Island, Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome Capital
Island sacred to healing since Roman times, shaped like a ship, with a still-operating hospital.
This guide to Tiber Island in Rome opens in 293 BCE, as plague grips the city and the Senate sends envoys all the way to Greece to fetch a sacred serpent from a temple of the healing god Aesculapius. It follows what happened when the ship carrying the snake reached this island, and how Romans came to treat the spot as a sanctuary for the sick, who slept there hoping the god would visit their dreams. Patients lay down in the temple grounds hoping the god would visit them in a dream and reveal a cure.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.