Tor Fiscale Park, Rome

They closed in the arches of the aqueducts to provide a fortified camp, enabling them to block the flow of supplies to the city via the Via Appia and the Via Latina.

For example, in 1084 the troops of Robert Guiscard, who had come to the aid of Pope Gregory VII in his struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, pitched their camp in this area.

On the west side there is a small depressed arch, built, perhaps, to relieve the weight of the wall above the foundations of the aqueducts.

[1] It originally served as a watch tower, as part of a small castle owned by the Annibaldi family.

[2] The name of Fiscale attributed to the tower appears not to come from a tax-collecting function, as was one role of the nearby Tomb of Caecilia Metella on the Appian Way, but from the fact that at one time the estate belonged to the Papal Treasurer.