The Tiber (Fiume Tevere, or ancient Tiberis) is the second largest river in Italy. It rises in the Etruscan Apennines in central Italy, flows south across Tuscany, Umbria, and north Latium, then south west through Rome, with which it is closely associated, to to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Ruskin recalls his first sight of 'the first sluggish reach of Tiber with its mud shore and ocheous water' which he compares unfavourably with the 'breezy tide of Thames' ( Works, 35.271). In Val d' Arno (1873) he describes it as the symbol of Papal power ( Works, 22.13).