Tevere / Periyar

The River Tiber’s connections to the Periyar River along the Kerala coast are historic, mythic, maritime and cultural — Christian missionaries, Roman coins, Jews fleeing the pillage of the Second Temple, maritime trade between Ostia and the Indian Ocean.

At the historic site of the fifteenth-century wall of the Roman Jewish ghetto along the Tiber, Harmattan created a spontaneous performance of memory and forgiveness on the morning of Pope Francis’s visit to the Roman ghetto — only the third papal visit there in the history of the Vatican. The ancient walled ghetto, situated below the Tiber’s floodplain at the site of an old circus, was perpetually flooded and damp. Walking along the Tiber at Isola Tiberina on January 17, 2016 was a journey in history and memory.