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Abstract:  The narrow area wedged between the Tiber’s banks and the old via Recta, now via dei Coronari, in the heart of inhabited Rome, underwent radical change between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a result of the strong transformations that changed the face of the city with the definitive return to Rome of the papal seat after the long exile in Avignon. Concentrated here from medieval times were a series of artisan and productive activities tied to the proximity of the river and reflected in its toponyms. Beginning from the second half of the fifteenth century, the urban renovation promoted by the papacy in the area inside the bend in the Tiber brought a profound change in this zone as well. Areas once reserved to crafts and «poor» commerce, closely tied to the presence of the river and the routes of communication between the north-east zone of the city and the Borgo Vaticano, acquired a new facies with splendid noble palaces, proper apartments for curiam sequentes and rich merchants, shops and hotels. The Tiber is the constant presence underlying these changes: benign and saving, transporting men and goods, supporting enterprises; malign and deadly, causing frequent floods and terrible devastation. The inextricable relationship between the city and the river emerges in all of its facets in this micro urban history: the river, the protagonist of the transformation of this unknown tessera in the mosaic composing the urban rebirth of the city.