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Abstract: Prior to 1470 very few clients like Cardinals Rodrigo Borgia and Jacopo Ammannati built palaces overlooking the Tiber. Sixtus IV della Rovere (1471-1484) began to ennoble it with public constructions such as ponte Sisto, the Santo Spirito Hospital and the section of via Sistina that joins the Borgo with piazza del Popolo and that prominent members of the Curia like Giovanfrancesco Martelli and Ulisse Lanciarini enriched with a long series of buildings overlooking the river. But it was only under his nephew Julius II della Rovere (1503-1513) that the Tiber once again acquired a role of primary importance in Roman building. He had via Giulia, via della Lungara and the northern section of via Ripetta laid out, in addition to having piazza di Ponte and via del Banco di Santo Spirito regularized and he had planned to reconstruct ponte Trionfale. Julius II commissioned Bramante to construct the enormous Palazzo dei Tribunali and the church of SS. Celso and Giuliano, while Giuliano da Sangallo was selected for the Castel Sant’ Angelo loggia overlooking the river. At the same time, he encouraged rich clients such as Agostino Chigi, Bindo Altoviti, goldsmiths, the Florentines and Cardinal Farnese to build lavish palazzi along the river. This tendency continued under the two Medici popes with the extension of via Ripetta, the projects for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and for Santa Maria della Penna, with the large and small palaces of the Cenci, Adimari, Leno, Sangallo, Sigismondo Chigi and Baschenis’ and with the villas of Baldassare Turini da Pescia, Antonio del Monte or with Villa Madama in which the utopia of transforming the river into a triumphal way like the Grand Canal in Venice reached its height. Partially as a result of the many floods that followed the Sack of Rome, the center of construction activity shifted to the city’s higher ground and after 1880, hundreds of houses from the preceding five centuries were demolished for the construction of the embankments of the Tiber without even being surveyed and documented.