Roman aqueduct
Acueducto con arquerías y sifones (Aqua Appia)
- Date
- 312 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Rome, Italy
- Credited to
- Appius Claudius Caecus (censor)
- People
- 👤 Apio Claudio el Ciego?–300 BCE
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Water conveyance by gravity with calculated gradient, underground channels, arcades and inverted lead siphons, feeding fountains, baths and houses. Rome came to receive a million cubic metres daily.
The Persian qanats (8th century BCE) and the aqueduct of Eupalinos on Samos (6th century BCE) are direct precursors.
What it led to
- Cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants with public sanitation and hygiene
- Baths, fountains and public latrines as spaces of sociability
- Hydraulic administration (curator aquarum) and water law
- Urban water mills (Barbegal) and irrigation
Built on
- Qanatc. 800 BCE
- True voussoir arch and barrel vaultc. 300 BCE
- Persian qanat
- Tunnel of Eupalinos
- Lead piping
Made possible
- Hypocaustc. 100 BCE
- Roman public bathsc. 100 BCE
- Chorobates (Roman water level)c. 25 BCE
- Zaghouan-Carthage aqueductc. 130
- Aghlabid reservoirs of Kairouanc. 862
- Roman baths
- Vertical waterwheel mill
- Chorobates (levelling instrument)