✅ On the outskirts of Rome there is the magnificent Parco degli Acquedotti (Tor Fiscale) with the imposing ruins of some of the great aqueducts that supplied the city with water. One of them, the Acqua Virgo still works, and feeds the Trevi Fountain.

✅ The Romans learned the art of water channeling from the Etruscans, and perfected it thanks to the use of the arch and cocciopesto, a waterproof mortar mixed with fragments of bricks, which is indestructible and revetted channels and cisterns.

✅ The aqueducts had a slope of few centimeters per kilometer, enough to make the water flow in the desired direction thanks to the force of gravity, but without having too much pressure.

✅ To achieve the ideal flowing level, the channels and aqueducts were made to pass above tall arches, as in this Park, or were excavated underground in the tufa rock.

✅ Water was a sign of wealth and luxury in the great villas of the Roman aristocrats, embellished with nymphaea and fountains.
But above all the water was very important for hygiene, because it flowed in the sewers in a continuous cycle (the Cloaca Maxima in Rome still works). In the Middle Ages, when the maintenance of the aqueducts ceased, famine and pestilence arrived.

‼️ WATER: A SOURCE OF LIFE AND CIVILIZATION