The Ponte Milvio is Rome's oldest bridge. Its first stone-built ancestor dates back to 115 BC when it was outside the city limits. Nowadays the bridge, which carries the Via Flaminia cross the Tiber in the northern end of Rome, has become a sort of Lovers' Lane. Inspired by Federico Moccia's Ho voglia di te (I want you) couples come here to place padlocks testifying to their love. There are now a lot of them. Seventeen hundred years ago, on Tuesday, October 28, the scene was very different. That day the bridge featured in a battle that changed the course of history.
There aren't many battles that changed history, and making this sort of claim for any battle may seem pretty melodramatic. But the events of October 28, 312 were melodramatic. On that day the Roman emperor Constantine defeated his rival emperor Maxentius, and in doing so found proof that he had made the right decision a few months earlier. That decision was to become a Christian; in the next two decades Constantine encouraged millions of his subjects to become Christians as well. By the time of his death on May 22, 337 Christianity was firmly established as the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. Just a few years before he converted, Christians were victims of a savage persecution, and it seemed that the best they could hope for was that they once again be a tolerated minority within the empire.
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