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Abstract:  As worked progressed on the new St. Peter’s and other construction sites opened in sixteenth century Rome, the economic and organizational necessity of supplying building materials confirmed the strategic importance river transportation could play for a growing construction industry. The joining courses of the Tiber and Aniene rivers provided the papal city with preferential routes to transport cut stone, lumber, stone chips, lime and pozzulana: all could shipped from the Papal State’s holdings or from the sea to various city landings, nerve centers for the city’s economy, and from there sorted and sent to specific construction sites. The Roman river system, running through the most important areas for the production of building materials, allowed for their transportation to the city in a relatively brief time, especially during the seasons when overland transportation was prohibitive. Ports along the Tiber, both old and of recent creation, merged into an increasingly tight and functional infrastructure network as can be seen in sixteenth and seventeenth Roman cartography. Different discharge ports were used according to material type (cut stone was discharged at Marmorata and Ripa Grande), size (firewood at porta Ripetta, pozzolana near the St. Paul’s Basilica) or destination (such was the case of the port of Traspontina, used only for the construction site of St. Peter’s). The ports were all connected by the principal Roman roads. Especially designated government offices and specific legislation, modified and integrated repeatedly, attempted to regulate the complicated workings of river commerce. This proved to be rather complex as can be seen in a sequence of edicts and motu propri issued up to 1702 following that of Paul III Farnese, dated 15 August 1539: with them the Aniene River, with its trees, lumber, pozzulana and stone quarries were «donated» to the Fabbrica di San Pietro which tried to maintain their possession for at least two centuries. Exceptional building sites, such as the Vatican’s, justified exceptional measures to guarantee the consignment of the extraordinary quantity of materials required. Petrian documentary sources provide a picture of the measures adopted regarding fluvial transport, from the use of specific tools to load and unload the heaviest materials to the construction of indispensable palisades to regulate water flow, from bank, dock and levee maintenance to contracts for dredging the river bottom, from the management of licenses for boatmen and carters to defining sanctions (that could reach «major excommunication» in some cases) to the decisions concerning the frequent accidents involving men and boats.