A 21-year-old American university student died in Rome in the early hours of Tuesday 11 June after apparently slipping on the wall along the Lungotevere dei Tebaldi and falling over 15 metres to his death on the stone embankment below.

Witnesses say the student had been walking along the wall above the Tiber near Ponte Sisto at around 02.00, before seemingly losing his balance and plummeting to the ground.

The victim is reported to have been a student of one of Rome's American universities.

Consumer watchdog Codacons said that this is the third fatal incident along the Tiber in the past five years, and urged the city to install safety nets to break people's falls and security cameras to allow for the immediate intervention of police in "potentially dangerous situations".