Introduction: Aqueducts in Antiquity

Rome, the capital of the Empire, had the largest complex of aqueducts anywhere, feeding some QUANTITIES cubic meters daily to the City from HOW MANY aqueducts. The figures for the aqueducts of Rome in full spate are very impressive. the Aqua Virgo discharged 100,160 cubic meters per 24 hours, and the lot - i.e. the 502km of the 11 aqueducts of Rome - dumped 1,127,220 cubic meters per 24 hours! (Hodge 1991, 347 for flow statistics). Today, water reaches our houses under pressure: we turn on the tap, and out it comes. In other words, water today is stored until it is needed. Although there are plenty of antique examples of water piped to houses from high tanks, and run off when needed (e.g. Pompeii), this was impossible with aqueducts, which delivered their water day in, day out. Much of it went into two kinds of conspicuous display, namely the great baths, and fountains, the terminal points of which were usually called a castellum or a nymphaeum, this latter name redolent of mythology. Although many monumental fountains were used for collecting household water, any residue simply seeped away, and eventually into the Tiber. The great Baths declined, even if a few clergy made use of the water supply to implant baptisteries on the site; bathing as a pleasurable activity also declined, with some strict mediaeval strictures against communal bathing, especially in monasteries.

But the tradition of the fountain, reborn during the Renaissance, survived and prospered; and the desire to make a show involving sculpture, rocks, water, and even cascades - usually called the mostra, the modern version of the castellum - survives with it. Although not exclusively a Roman tradition - there were, after all, working monumental fountains in Perugia and Siena in DATE, long before we find any in Rome - it is nevertheless to Rome that sufficient quantities of water could be channeled to make a show.

The Popes and Water Supply

Since it was the repair of the aqueducts that enabled the construction of the fountains along their length or at their terminal, here are some of the most famous, arranged by aqueduct:

• Acqua Felice, 1585, by Sixtus V (Felix Peretti, hence the name of the water supply):
  1. 1587-8: del Moise, Domenico Fontana
  3. 4 Fontane;
  4. 4 Fontane; and the same thing
  5. uncleaned;
  6. 1643: del Tritone, Bernini
  7. 1513: della Navicella, by Leo X
  8. Quirinal
  9. 1818: Dioscuri, Pius VII (Quirinal)
  10. Campidoglio and AraCoeli
  11. Viale della Trinita dei Monti
  12. Piazza Campitelli
• Acqua Vergine (Antica e Nuova). Nicholas V began reconstructing the Vergine Antica in 1453, with a mostra near the present Trevi, for which Leon Battista Alberti designed a long simple basin fed by three streams.
  1. Piazza del Popolo
  2. Piazza Colonna
  4. 1627-9: della Barcaccia;, Pietro Bernini
  5. Pantheon
  6. 1640ff: di Trevi, begun by Bernini, completed by Salvi in 1732-51
  7. 1581-4: delle Tartarughe, Giacomo della Porta
• Acqua Paola:
  1. Paola: Trastevere
  2. In front of SM in Trasetevere;
  3. Fontana del Prigione (Trastevere)
  4. 16thC: del Mascherone (Via Giulia)
  5. Piazza Farnese
  6. S Peters Square
  7. 1651: Fiumi, Bernini (Piazza Navona)
  8. 1654: del Moro, designed by Bernini (Piazza Navona)
  9. 1576: del Nettuno, perhaps by della Porta (Piazza Navona)
  10. 1613: di ponte Sisto, Giovanni Fontana (moved here from Via Giulia)
  11. dell'Anfora
• Acqua Pia Antica Marcia:
  1. 1635: di Giulio III with arms of Colonna placed here at this date (Via Flaminia)
  2. Villa Giulia nymphaeum
  3. 1644, delle Api, Bernini
  4. 1590: della Terrina (moved to Piazza della Chiesa Nuova from Campo dei Fiori in 1924)
  5. 1791: Cavalli Marini, Unterberger (Villa Borghese)
  6. 1786: Eusculapius, Asprucci (Villa Borghese)
  7. 1929: Fauni, Nicolini (Villa Borghese)
  8. 1885: delle Naiadi, Guerrieri (Piazza della Repubblica)

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  where do the following go:

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• date: della botticella
• mid-17thC: del Giglio, perhaps Algardi (Villa Doria Pamphili)
• 1930s: del Globo (Foro Italico)
• Peschiera: where? We may estimate that in 1500 there were HOW MANY, 1600, 1700, 1800. This decline in the number of fountains is matched by that in Istanbul, which counted over 50% more in the 16th century than it does today DETAILS.

  What did the Renaissance know about antique fountains?

  If we are to maintain (as the Renaissance itself did) the antique inspiration for much of its building activity, then one conundrum is exactly what the Renaissance knew about ancient fountains (except from literary sources. We know from excavated and restored theHellenistic and Roman cities such as Side and Aspendos that fountains were often monumental in scale and rich inn bas-reliefs and sculpture in the round. Wed might think of the Fontana di Trevi as the post-antique equivalent to Plancia Magna's work at Aspendos - but we have no evidence that the Renaissance or Baroque periods knew about such stupendously elaborate eye-stoppers, All we do know is that the Renaissance Popes, again aping the ancient Romans in this as in so many other respects, initiated the repair of many of the aqueducts essential as feeders for the monumental fountains they constructed.

  The state of Roman aqueducts in the 15th century

  Kept in repair, the aqueducts could make the highest hills of Rome habitable: the Palatine, with its cooling breezes, was made so by its aqueduct. Aqueducts in Antiquity were carefully guarded (farmers tended to pilfer the water along the way), and regularly repaired. When they broke and went unrepaired, then land out in the Campagna became marshy and eventually mosquito-infested. Malaria then caused depopulation. Similarly, habitation on the Palatine came to an end when the aqueducts broke. In mediaeval Rome, only the low-lying area in the bend of the Tiber - the Campus Martius, still a working-class area - remained habitable, because water could be drawn from the river (not to be recommended today). Higher areas were abandoned (cf the various maps of Rome: hotlinks!!).

  But what happened to the aqueducts and the water supply when the former were no longer regularly maintained? Indeed, did aqueducts survive antiquity? At Rome, some did, or were rebuilt at various periods. In Gaul, A Guillerme (1983) concludes that about half the aqueducts were still going strong in the Merovingian period; and that subsequently, they declined where urbanity declined, and fountains and baths were no longer needed. He dismisses out-of-hand the hoary notion that that they were broken because of barbarians after lead.

  Unfortunately, Hodges has little information on the supply end after distribution - i.e. fountains and the rest - without which the aqueducts were pointless and even dangerous, as wholesale leakage would cause swamping and malaria, as noted above. Unfortunately, then, we know next to nothing about the nature of the fountains into which the aqueducts debouched - and hence exactly the same about putative antique sources for Renaissance fountains.

  If acqueducts survived whilst they were still of use - that is, whilst urban civilization flourished or at least faltered along, and something could be done with the water at the "business end", then looking at the usage of Roman baths should help tell us about the state of the aqueducts. Unfortunately, this is a topic that writers on ancient baths avoid (cf. Nielsen 1993: this is a good general survey, but doesn't deal with the decline of the baths, or their conversion into baptisteries etc etc).

  The Renaissance and ancient fountains

  How did the Renaissance know what ancient fountains looked like? They had Frontinus' tgext on aqueducts and, of course, crawling around aqueducts with this text in hand soon told one how they worked, and what was needed to repair them. In Rome or indeed the Italian Peninsula, no monumental fountains survived intact from Antiquity, but there were plenty of ruins, many of them focussed in antique complexes such as Hadrian's Villa, itself the inspiration for the Villa d'Este, further up the hill in Tivoli itself.

  Generally,

  The Popes were fond of erecting inscriptions trumpeting their justifiable pride at getting the waters flowing again, as for example at the hospital adjacent to

• S Giovanni in Laterano;
• S Giovanni in Laterano;

  Conclusion

  Today, thanks to the example of the antique so readily followed by the Renaissance and Baroque popes, Rome still has a profusion of fountains of drinking water (the connoisseurs claim to be able to tell from which aqueduct the different flavours of water descend).