A FIRE HAS destroyed part of an historic bridge spanning the Tiber River in Rome.

Firefighters said the blaze broke out shortly before midnight on the Industry Bridge near the Ostiense neighbourhood, and it was extinguished by 4am today.

No-one was injured but three nightclubs along the riverside, an area popular with young people, were evacuated as a precaution.

The blaze appeared to have started in an area of shacks occupied by homeless people on the river bank before spreading to the bridge itself.

Authorities are understood to believe the fire might have been started when a cooking gas canister used by one of the homeless people exploded.

During the fire, a section of the bridge’s outer pedestrian walkway and a stretch under the road carrying utility lines broke off and fell into the Tiber.

The fire is believed to have started in an area nearby where homeless people live.

Firefighters said the bridge is currently too dangerous to be used and they also banned any navigation under it until the span can be repaired.

Pope Pius IX attended the 1863 inauguration of the bridge, one of the last major construction works in Rome in the waning years of the papal state controlling the city, which would soon become the capital of unified Italy.

It originally served as a railway bridge before later being refitted to take cars and pedestrians.

A plaque nearby pays tribute to 10 women who were executed on the bridge in 1944 by German SS troops occupying Rome during the latter years of the Second World War.

The women were punished for having occupied a bakery to feed their families amid food shortages.