The garden in which the first miracle of our Madonna took place (around 1488) was part of that large quantity of gardens and meadows that for centuries had spread out on the right bank of the Tiber. Apart from some marshy areas, it seems that up to the fifth century BC spelled and barley were cultivated in large quantities, while starting from the fourth century (and in the nearby Monteverde Nuovo, up to the middle of the twentieth century!) Also wheat, vines and olive trees , as well as the most common vegetables which - at least according to what some chronicles say - were of very modest quality. The area where the church is located today was called prata Mutia or “meadows of Muzio (Scevola)” and we will talk about it shortly. A short distance away, more or less where the Trastevere railway station is today, lay the Orti di Cesare, the same gardens that the god Julius then left as an inheritance to the Roman people. Then - where today there is piazzale della Radio - the prata Quintia, the meadows of Lucio Quinzio Cincinnato, where the distinguished general retired to lead a purely rural life.

In ancient times, that part of Rome that stretched across Tiberim (beyond the Tiber), despite being an indispensable outpost for the defense of the city, was a purely rural and sparsely populated area: the few peasants existing there were, moreover, also the first to have to face the Etruscan raids with arms. In this foothill area - which also includes today's squares Mastai and San Francesco a Ripa - we have news and traces of a countryside settlement, the pagus Ianiculensis, which already existed in the monarchical era. Hill and village, in the Archaic era, were subject to the Etruscan city of Veio, but it was under King Anco Marzio that the Sublicio bridge was built (a few meters north of the present one) and the Roman control over that outpost. The reform of Servio Tullio then established the 4 urban and 17 rustic tribes: the small possessions beyond the Tiber, referred to as septem pagi (seven villages), constituted the Romilia tribe, from the name of the gens that dominated there.

And here we are to recall some events - where history and legend merge - which connoted the Trastevere area we are dealing with with glory. In the year 509 BC the last ruler of Etruscan origin had been exiled from Rome, that Tarquinio so despotic as to have earned the epithet of Superbo. He tried by all means to recover the lost throne, so that one day he turned to Porsenna - lucumone of the city of Chiusi - to provide him with the military support necessary for a forceful action. The Etruscan king then personally put himself at the head of an army and, having passed the nerve center of the Janiculum hill, he set up camp near the Sublicio bridge, giving bait to an incredible sequence of heroic facts, now unfortunately confined in the dust of books youth scholastics.

Here then is Publio Orazio called Coclite (as he is blind in one eye), descendant of those famous Horatii who fought against the Curiazi, who alone engaged in the battle on the bridge - attacked by surprise by the Etruscans - until the companions behind him they managed to demolish the wooden structure and thus prevent the possible invasion of the city.

Here is Clelia, part of a group of girls - all daughters of eminent personalities - whom Porsenna had claimed as a hostage to guarantee the negotiations. But Clelia was also endowed with indomitable temper, so that she placed herself at the head of her companions and after many adventures she managed to return to friendly territory. The Romans, however, were people all in one piece and, in order not to lose their honor, they returned the hostages to Porsenna.

Before King Clelia she went with such pride as to convince him to send her back to his family and to finally lift the siege. Later, an equestrian statue was dedicated to her, the first ever to be dedicated to a woman in Rome.

Finally, here is Caio Muzio Cordo, who recklessly entered the enemy camp to kill Porsenna himself. Unfortunately he stabbed the wrong person and was captured by the guards, who brought him before the king. Here, with intrepid firmness, he placed his right hand on a lit brazier and let it burn, as self-punishment for the failure of the enterprise. The episode impressed Porsenna to such an extent that he immediately decided to enter into peace negotiations, while Muzio from then on took the nickname “Scevola”, ie left-handed, with which he would become famous.

Having now escaped the Etruscan threat, the Roman Senate also awarded him, like Orazio Coclite, a plot of land, but in the case of Muzio they wanted to give the gesture a particular symbolic value: the farm had to be identified in that same area on which Porsenna had set up camp at the time. Someone has also come to give a precise size to the plot of land: a iugero, equal to about 2,500 m². In any case, it was thus that - since then - that small rural area on the banks of the Tiber became known as "meadows of Muzio" or even "gardens of Muzio".

Precisely because of its rustic and secluded characteristic, the Oltretevere was considered for centuries almost detached from the rest of the city, so much so that only after the administrative reform wanted by Augustus did it form the XIV Region, whose orient boundaries were given to the north by the Campo Vatican, east from the Tiber (including the Tiber Island), south from Porta Portese, west from the Janiculum. In this way it also became the largest of all the urban regions, with its perimeter of about 33,400 feet (about ten thousand meters), as stated in the Regional Catalogs. The Tiber actually separated the two city hemispheres not only in a symbolic sense. The transtiberine territory was also called Romilla (from the name of the ancient gens Romilia) and the commoner who had to go across the bridge used to say - still at the end of the nineteenth century - "I greet you, I am going into Rome".

It could also happen that some, especially the elderly, boasted that in their life they had never "crossed the bridge", almost as if their familiarity with the Tiber would bring a sort of contamination.

The sanguine and exasperated rivalry existing between Trastevere and the opposite of the Monti district (the “monticiani”), then, was unmatched by any other of the Roman districts. In fact, in addition to often exchanging stone-throwing with the other shore, the Trasteverino felt that he belonged to a different urban elite, indeed to a "Roman" even higher than that of other fellow citizens, in this perhaps corroborated by the fact that - historically - the rione was considered inhabited "by the purest Latin blood, because in that XIV region of Rome the rulers for a long time did not want other people to join and live there" (see Publio Barghiglioni - The Tiber island and the Trasteverina region in "The vulgo di Roma ", edited by Francesco Sabatini; Rome 1890).

If all this were not enough, even the dialect spoken to Romilla was a little different from that used in the rest of the city, even if - in turn - the Trastevere language actually consisted of two strains: that of Terra and that of Ripa. The latter referred to the language used in the area around the port of Ripa Grande and on the Tiber island itself, "which is Romanesque, but full of marine terms and ways". In fact, the Trasteverini di Ripa - always "in contact with the navigators of the Calabrian and Sicilian sailing ships" - ended up assimilating some expressive ways, so much so that "their imagination, always full of Rome, accepts and renders southern images, and is familiar with things of the sea ”(P. Barghiglioni, ibidem).

Returning to the initial argument, therefore, the area on which the Madonna dell'Orto stands is located in the center of the Gianicolense area including both the pagus and the lands of Muzio Scevola. The point was really crucial, especially for its position along the river: formerly a docking point for the Roman Emporium, it became the seat of the port of Ripa Grande as well as the Papal Arsenal. The river port, in particular, was for centuries a hub of flourishing commercial activities of all kinds. The goods (cereals, wine, oil, various materials, etc.) arrived at the port of Ostia from all over the world: there they were sorted and loaded on smaller ships, which reached the port of Ripa Grande pulled by oxen along the banks . Moreover, the urban stretch of the via Aurelia (now via della Lungaretta) began a few tens of meters from Ripa, a vital artery connecting with the north. It was precisely numerous commercial operators gravitating around the port who, at the end of the fifteenth century, first formed a consortium to establish the Confraternity in honor of Mary (1492) and shortly after to begin the construction of the church on the very site of the garden that had seen the healing of its owner.