Rome is a city of fountains — gushing, spurting, soaring in shimmering geysers in squares, courtyards, parks, and alleyways. Clear, cold drinking water is abundantly available to all. Rome’s fountains also lend an atmosphere of sensuous fantasy to this russet-colored city. The water may gush from a triton’s seashell, pour gracefully from a nymph’s jar, roil around the plunging steeds of Neptune. Underlying this extravaganza is an astonishing water system that began with the Aqua Appia in 312 B.C.
Roman Aqueducts Foster a Civilization
At their zenith, the ancient aqueducts delivered 300 million gallons per day, replacing the flood-prone, marsh-bound Tiber, with its invitation to disease. The water traveled underground, through vaulted culverts, except where elevated, arch-borne structures spanned the valleys. This system was Rome’s life-blood. It made public hygiene possible and gave rise to the great baths, where Romans met to socialize, exercise, and conduct the world’s business.
The Aqua Appia lasted 849 years, until 537 A.D., when Visigoth attackers severed it during the Sack of Rome. For the next 1,033 years, the populace made do, resorting primarily to the septic, malarial Tiber for both drinking water and water power.
Four Papal Fountains in Rome
Beginning in 1570 with the Acqua Vergine, aqueducts were resuscitated, as Renaissance and Baroque popes mounted public water-works projects. With these came the phantasmagorical “mostre,” or display fountains, incorporating their respective papal family emblems (turtle, bee, dolphin, horse).
The Acqua Vergine — built by Clement XI upon the ancient Aqua Virgo — feeds the obelisk fountain at the Pantheon and also the later Trevi fountain (featured in Three Coins in a Fountain and again in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita). The Acqua Felice followed in 1587, built by Sixtus V on the remains of the Aqua Appia and feeding the “Moses” fountain in the Piazza San Bernardo. Third came the Acqua Paola in 1611 (formerly Trajan’s Aqueduct), supplying the “Fontanone” (Great Fountain) on the Janiculum Hill.
The Eternal Waters of Rome at Risk?
Today, the aqueducts consist of long underground conduits resembling the galleries of a newly-minted subway system. Computers monitor flow, conductivity, and water quality. The main supply still flows inexhaustibly through the 1949 Peschiera Aqueduct, which originates in the foothills of the contorted Abruzzo range, two hours’ drive northeast of Rome. It delivers 8 million liters per hour to Rome. Security is paramount — multiple conduits back each other up in case of catastrophe, and access is stringently limited to authorized personnel. Yet Nature could still accomplish what the Visigoths did, almost 1,500 years ago.
Italy is a brittle product of plate tectonics. A USGS website lists links to official earthquake research facilities within Italy, along with maps and findings. Symbols denoting quake occurrences and hazard rates on seismicity maps all but obliterate the interior north-south spine of the peninsula. Place-names bespeak the character of this region: Eagle (L’Aquila), Headwater, Castle Mount, Black Earth, Rock, Well, Round Mountain, Trench. The epicenter of the deadly earthquake of April 6, 2009, was located at the Gran Sasso d’Italia — the Great Rock of Italy, with L’Aquila being the nearest population center, only 55 miles east of Rome.
Geo-archaeologists have identified evidence of earthquake damage in many ancient water conduits. Although underground pipelines have a major advantage over the old overhead aqueducts, which were easily shaken apart, Rome still lives with the ever-present threat of having its waters cease to flow.
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