The island that became a ship

This island has been healing people for twenty-two centuries. In 291 BC, during a plague epidemic, Rome brought in the cult of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, and the story goes that the snake they carried with them chose this island itself. A temple rose, the sick slept here hoping for a dream that would give them a diagnosis, and the spot sat conveniently outside the crowded city.

The Romans then disguised the island as a ship. They wrapped the tips in travertine shaped like a ship's prow, and on the southeastern tip you can still see part of that prow, with a staff and a snake coiled around it carved into the stone.

The hospital on the north side has been in continuous service since 1583. In the autumn of 1943, when the German occupiers in Rome were hunting Jews, the doctors here invented a disease that did not exist. They called it Syndrome K, wrote the name on the papers of people in hiding, placed them in a separate ward, and warned that it was highly contagious and that the patients coughed violently. German inspectors who came to check turned back at the door. Dozens of people made it through this way.

The church on the island, San Bartolomeo, stands on the site of the ancient temple. In the steps before the altar there is a well reaching down to the old spring.

We leave the island on the side we came from and stop halfway across the bridge to the Trastevere bank.