Aqueducts

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Antiquity, aqueduct, Rome, water

When in Rome or Italy, you hear a lot about the impressive infrastructure built by the ancient Romans, roads, bridges, buildings, fountains and aqueducts. Rome in antiquity before the first century grew to be the most populous city in the world, 1 million people lived in Rome when it was the Capital of the World. No other city in what was the ancient world was as populous and this meant that you needed a lot of urban planning and the Romans were very good at it, compared to us today.

There was a mathematical order to their cities, but also they were built for people to live in with all necessary facilities at hand, just a few steps away from your home. Same for their Military camps, well ordained and organized. Human needs were provided for, from the supply to safe drinking water, to food preparation areas with dining facilities, parks, public bathhouse and public toilets, markets and entertainment areas. All in the Urbe (city centre) the Sub-Urbia or below the centre was usually a less pleasant area for the poorer classes.

When you have a city of a million people, you need lots of clean water to drink and to wash and to feed into the massive bathhouses all around the city which provided hot and cold water 24/7. Rome also had and still has public fountains to drink water which is said to be the best water in all of Europe. The Nassone gush cold clean water usually in strategic areas of the city so you can have a quick drink on a hot day.

Back in 2008 we visited the Parco degli Acquedotti (Aqueduct Park) is located in the South East of Rome, it is an area that is still a bit out of the way, we took the Metro and then a bus to get to it. You will see 6 of the famous 11 aqueducts feeding the city. What we saw was surprising, several large aqueducts coming in from the countryside into the city.

The Aqueducts are the Anio Vetus (underground), Marcia, Tepula, Julia, Claudio and Anio Novus . There is also l’ acquedotto Felice (next to Julia), which was built at the time of the Renaissance by Pope Sixtjus V in 1586 in a program to both irrigate farmland and provide clean water. The Fountain of Moses next to the St-Regis Hotel is the terminus of this aqueduct. This one was in our neighbourhood so it is well known to us.

Fountain of Moses, corner of Via Venti Settembre and Largo di Santa Susanna

The Aqueduct system worked up to the fourth century A.D. when neglect and destruction brought about the barbarian hordes cut the flow of water into the City. Almost 1000 years would pass before the aqueducts would be restored by the Popes who had returned to Rome. This lack of clean water caused the fall of Rome, its population declined to about 10,000 people, large areas of the Capital were abandoned.

These great arches are gigantic and impressive, they carried millions of litre of clean water into the city each day and supplied the population with a basic necessity.

They survived to this day because they are very solidly built, the Romans used concrete and stone in building them and also most are underground only emerging above ground within the city, gravity pushes the water along.

There are also ancient farms in the area, This one near Via Latina is more than 1200 years old. They look like fortress with small windows and massive gates. At night people and livestock all came inside. Today they are kept as museum and open on appointment for a guided visit.

On Via di Porta Latina, one of the ancient roads of Rome

Aqueduct on Via Latina which leads to the Porta Latina in the Aurelian Walls of Rome. one of the more ancient gates of the city.

The aqueducts had to be maintained daily and an army of men worked at repairing and cleaning them daily. At the top of the aqueduct there is one or two chambers which are large enough for a grown man to stand in. Workers would go into the chambers and scrub the walls and do other maintenance work. The system allowed for the water to be temporarily diverted while they worked. There was also a system of pipes made of copper or cut stone directing water into fountains or basins. To create pressure the pipes would taper off and the water would jet out with force into pools.

Another famous fountain in Rome on the Janiculum Hill in Trastevere is the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola also known as Il Fontanone (“The big fountain”) near the church of San Pietro in Montorio and just above the Residence of the Spanish Ambassador in Rome. It was re-built in 1612 to mark the end of the Acqua Paola aqueduct and the extension of the ancient Aqueduct Traiana, restored by Pope Paul V, Borghese, and took its name from him.

The six coloured marble columns come from the original basilica of St-Peter 306 A.D. salvaged during the construction of the New St-Peter’s (built 1500 to 1626) we see today. All the white marble of the fountain comes from the Temple of Mars the Avenger in the Forum. This fountain is featured at the beginning of the movie La grande Bellezza. The view of Rome from the piazza in front of it is spectacular.

Another famous fountain in Rome which also gets its water from an ancient Aqueduct is the Trevi Fountain. The water comes from 14 miles outside Rome and carried by the Acqua Virgo one of the most ancient aquaduct of Rome built in 19 BC.

The aqueducts also supplied water to the many great bathhouses of Rome, one which can be visited and is fairly complete is the Baths of Caracalla, you can walk in the dried pools and admire the beautiful mosaic floors, visit the subterranean corridors where slaves labourer daily by feeding the various ovens with wood to produce hot water for the pools and also channel same hot water to heat the floors. The pools are quite shallow, hip deep only, Romans including sailors of the Imperial Navy did not know how to swim and many were afraid of any body of water, Romans were very superstitious and saw omens in almost anything. The baths were a social place to meet friends and relax, exercise and enjoy a meal. One aqueduct was feeding continually the Baths of Caracalla and today part of it pass across the gardens of the Canadian Ambassadors residence at Porta Latina, an impressive sight. Other aqueducts fed water to the Imperial palaces of the Palatine Hill.

Aqueduct in the garden of the Canadian Residence in Rome. (not open to the public)

pool floor in coloured mosaic at the Baths of Caracalla built in 212 AD.

When visiting other parts of Italy or of what was the Roman Empire you may encounter to this day a ruined aqueduct. One that is still working very well is at the Alcazar Palace in Seville. In the gardens you can see a jet of water shooting out of a large pipe well above a large pool, all the water is use to water the large gardens of the Alcazar and the Royal Palace which is still in use today for the King of Spain when he visits Seville.

If you want to read more on Roman engineering the book by A. Trevor Hodge, Roman Aqueduct and Water supply, is worth a read.

Late August

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Antiquity, Cape Sounion, Greece, Pericles, Poseidon

The Sunset at Cape Sounion are truly magical. Twice I had the good fortune to be there. The site is ancient and the temple ruins are evocative. The earliest literary reference to Sounion is in Homer’s Odyssey . The story recounts that as the various Greek commanders sailed back from Troy, the helmsman of the ship of King Menelaus of Sparta died at his post. His shipmates cremate his remains on the beach at Cape Sounion.

The temple of Poseidon at Sounion was constructed in 444–440 BC. This was during the ascendancy of the Athenian statesman Pericles, who also rebuilt the Parthenon in Athens. It was built on the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost 60 metres (200 ft). The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle, i.e., it had a front portico with six columns.

When I see such ruins dating back 2500 years, one can only be in awe considering that a human life is about 80 years. Martin Heidegger visited Sounion during his journey to Greece in 1962, as described in his book Sojourns. He goes on to reflect “the people of this country knew how to inhabit and demarcate the world against the barbarous in honour of the seat of the gods. …they knew how to praise what is great and by acknowledging it, to bring themselves in front of the sublime, founding, in this way, a world”

Sun set at the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion

The temple is located about 45 minutes outside of Athens on the Southern most tip of Attica and facing the Aegean Sea.

The changing Forum area

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Antiquity, Constantine, Forum, Maxentius, Penates, Rome

I have for many years taken a keen interest in the continuing study and work of archeologists in the area of the Roman Forum in Rome. What we see today is a modern view of the Forum brought to us by Benito Mussolini between 1923 and 1939, he ordered immense work of clearing in this vast central area of Rome. Hundreds of buildings built between 410 and 1800 where demolished to reveal the ancient temples and other public buildings of ancient Rome. During the middle ages the population of Rome was no more than about 50K it had once been 1 million prior to 410.  The Middle Ages was a time of great darkness in the European World and all knowledge went out, people could not read nor write, there were no schools and superstition took over. Only a handful of clerics, monks and Nobles could read and write but even then the basis of all education was Holy Scriptures and not much else.

It is only by 1297 with the end of the last crusade that Europe, mainly Italy will start to emerge from this long period of hibernation. In the meantime the area known as the Roman Forum had been reduced to a quarry and a cluster of houses and fortress like structures built amongst the great temples and other public buildings of Imperial Rome.

All the metals like bronze, silver and gold had been stripped away, the marble cladding removed and the columns of the many buildings re-used in the building of churches and monasteries. Many of these superb buildings had been reduced as we can see today to nothing more than foundations. Much of it buried by the yearly floods of the Tiber river which brought sediment and mud covering everything up in several meters deep.

However after 1300 many Nobles started to understand that the statues and precious marbles had value and were worth salvaging. The Renaissance gave rise to archeology and even the Popes and Cardinals became avid collectors of antiquities.

The other day I saw this painting of the Forum showing the Temple of Romulus, it dates back to the time of Emperor Maxentius and Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century. Though a plaque still identifies it by that name, historians now know that this is wrong and it is in fact a Temple dedicated to the Penates*

The  Romulus named was the little son of Maxentius who died very young. His father had the Senate of Rome vote his deification however no temple was dedicated to him. Much later this temple became a portico to the church of Saints Cosmo and Damiano (no longer saints since they never existed) behind it. It was later abandoned and closed. Its restoration to the state in which we see it today lasted for many years and it was re-opened to the public in 2010. There is not much to see inside, it is totally empty and the walls are bare. However the bronze doors are said to be the original, the lock in the door still works, the doors are at least 1600 years old.

The Temple of the Penates (Romolo) as it appeared on the Via Sacra in the 19th century. Note how the Via Sacra is narrow, in modern terms a single car could ride down it carefully. This was the triumphal road leading to the Capitoline Hill and the Temple of Jupiter great and best.  No the Roman Legions did not march down it as Hollywood would have you believe. In fact the Legions were by Law forbidden from entering the Sacred boundary of the City. Only the triumphant general his face painted red for Military Virtue on a chariot accompanied by the Legions Standard bearer and all the treasures (spoils of war) on carts paraded on the Via Sacra with the captives and defeated rulers of Nations conquered by Rome.

The temple of the Penates as seen today. Note how the facade as lost the Christian ornaments and the side buildings added over time.

Penates* Household gods worshipped in conjunction with Vesta and the lares by the ancient Romans. Originally, two deities of the storeroom or kitchen pantry. The Romans never sat down to eat without placing a portion aside for the Lares and Penates.

archeology not disneyland

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Alaric, Antiquity, Archeology, Empire, Rome, Temples, Titus, Vandals, Visigoths

I continue to follow developments on the billion Euros construction of the Metropolitana line C in Rome, this is a new subway line which is several years late and at least 2 billion Euros in cost overrun.

Line C is a new subway line which will cross the Roman Forum under the Via dei Fori Imperiali and though the line is well buried below ground the archeologists, historians, academics of all stripes are up in arms about it. Though this is not the first line to cross the Roman Forum some 80 years ago Benito Mussolini had line B come right into the Forum area where the current Colosseum station is located and back then the equipment did not exist like today to dig very deep, so a few antiquities were sacrificed.

At the same time 7 columns of the Temple of Peace built by Emperor Vespasian and Domitian to celebrate the triumph of Titus, have been re-erected, they like most of all the temples and public buildings in the Roman Forum had been quarried for valuable materials after the two sack of Rome in 410 and then in 455 AD when Rome was no longer the Capital of the Empire and the Bishop of Rome (Pope) was running the show with a few barbarian chieftains and needed a lot of construction material for new Christian churches, so all the luxurious coloured marbles and bronze was looted.

The Temple of Peace housed many treasures taken by Titus after the final sack and demolition of all of Jerusalem in 70 AD this included the complete destruction of the Second Temple of Salomon. The treasures of the temple were brought back to Rome as war booty, including the Ark of the Covenant with the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments Moses brought down from Mount Sinai and the great Menorah of the Temple.

All was safe in the Temple of Peace in Rome until 455 AD when it all disappeared never to be seen again. Who took it and when, no one knows, was it the Visigoths or the Vandals?

Many archeologists have been against this project to re-erect the 7 columns but others point out that it gives a better idea to people visiting the Roman Forum where the temple was located. It is only a small fragment of this large temple most of which is under the street or under a monastery and church next to it, strangely enough dedicated to Saints that never existed and are no longer in the Christian pantheon.

In this photo you can see the 7 columns and the ruins of the Temple of Peace. Line C is under construction just a few meters away, left of the photo.

Today computer enhanced photos have been published of the Temple of Rome and Venus, the largest temple ever built in the Roman Forum. There has been an idea floated for some 90 years that part of that temple should also be re-erected. All that remains today is the double cella which housed the Deities Rome and Venus, some columns and coloured marble floor with the actual platform on which the temple stood.  The temple is directly across from the Colosseum.

This is where the Disneyland concept comes in, many academics and historians see any attempt at rebuilding a temple some 1600 years after it vanished under the pick axe of looters as a form of cultural vandalism to please mass tourism.

Temple of Rome and Venus today, on either side some columns, the impressive platform of the temple itself and the cella in the middle where the deity’s statue stood. Rome is the goddess protecting the City and Venus is the ancestor of the first Imperial family the Julii, thus Julius Cesar and his nephew Octavian Augustus could claim divine origins.

If the temple still existed today this is how it would look, seen from the same spot as above. https://rometheimperialfora19952010.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/roma-archeologica-restauro-architettura-foro-della-pace-le-nuove-colonne-via-dei-fori-imperiali-nuove-prospettive-fonte-sandro-sciosci-facebook-1412205/

Side view from the Metro station entrance. As you can see it is impressive and by giving it a modern computer enhanced setting in Rome today with tourists around and the sign of the Line C under construction it makes it all too real.

But I wonder if it would be right to re-built such noble temples just to please the mass tourism market.

Today the goddess Roma stands guard just down the street above the tomb of the unknown Italian soldier at the Altar to the Nation. Maybe it should stay that way.

3D Rome app

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3D, Antiquity, App, Roma, Rome

For many years now scholars have been developing an App which would allow us to see Rome as it was around the year 320AD at the height of its architectural wonder.

It is also the year the Emperor Constantine decided to leave Rome to create a new Capital Constantinople (Istanbul). The view of Rome is not that of the era of Julius Caesar or Augustus or Nero but much later. Nonetheless it is how Rome of Antiquity is remembered today. It is very helpful because if you visit Rome making sense of all the ruins can be very difficult and bewildering. Most people concentrate on the Colosseum because it is the easiest to understand and just forget the rest. Even scholars have a tough time of it, unless you have studied the periods from the birth of the City to its decline 1000 years later, too many details and too many people to remember. I have a dictionary at home of Whose Who in Rome to make sense of it all.

3D ROMA

New Banner, ACROPOLIS

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Antiquity, ATHENA, ATHENS, Greece

This photo is one of my favourite, the Sacred grove surrounding the Acropolis of Athens. Visible the Parthenon which is still under renovation after 25 years and millions of Euros. If you wonder about the white and dark gold colour of the temple this is the repair work, new Pentelic marble is white and turn a dull golden colour with age. The work aims to stabilize this 2500 year old Temple to Athena. It is a spectacular temple and you can see what Athenians paid for after Pericles convinced them to give freely to finance this monument to the Goddess protecting their City. He told them that it was their duty as Citizens of Athens to do their duty and finance this project. An ancient concept that it is your Duty to do whatever you can for your country. Also visible is the Erechtheion and the entrance gate Propylaea. The neighbourhood below the hill is the Plaka, one of the oldest neighbourhood of Athens. In the distance the Aegean Sea and the Port of Piraeus, quite the dramatic view of the City.