Juanelo's Artifice (raising water from the Tagus)
Artificio de Juanelo (elevación de agua del Tajo)
- Date
- 1565-1581 · confidence high
- Place
- Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain
- Credited to
- Juanelo Turriano
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
A hydraulic device of wheels and articulated arms driven by the river current that lifted water from the Tagus to the Alcázar of Toledo, about a hundred metres higher. It was a technical feat of 16th-century engineering.
Juanelo built a first artifice between 1565 and 1569 and a second one around 1581. It proved costly and of limited output and lay in ruins by about 1639; only its foundations survive today.
What it led to
- water supply for the Alcázar (from 1569) and the city
- the greatest achievement of the era's water-lifting machines
- a tradition of devices collected in Los veintiún libros de los ingenios y máquinas (attributed to Juanelo)