The Origins Of Outdoor Fountains
The Origins Of Outdoor Fountains The incredible construction of a fountain allows it to provide clean water or shoot water high into air for dramatic effect and it can also serve as an excellent design feature to complete your home.
The primary purpose of a fountain was originally strictly functional. Inhabitants of cities, townships and small towns utilized them as a source of drinking water and a place to wash up, which meant that fountains needed to be linked to nearby aqueduct or spring. Up until the 19th century, fountains had to be more elevated and closer to a water supply, including aqueducts and reservoirs, in order to benefit from gravity which fed the fountains. Fountains were not only used as a water source for drinking water, but also to decorate homes and celebrate the artist who created it. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often times used by Romans to decorate their fountains. Muslims and Moorish garden designers of the Middle Ages included fountains to re-create smaller versions of the gardens of paradise. To demonstrate his dominance over nature, French King Louis XIV included fountains in the Garden of Versailles. To mark the entrance of the restored Roman aqueducts, the Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries commissioned the construction of baroque style fountains in the spot where the aqueducts arrived in the city of Rome
Since indoor plumbing became the standard of the day for clean, drinking water, by the end of the 19th century urban fountains were no longer needed for this purpose and they became purely decorative. Fountains using mechanical pumps instead of gravity helped fountains to deliver recycled water into living spaces as well as create special water effects.
Modern fountains are used to adorn community spaces, honor individuals or events, and enrich recreational and entertainment events.
Aqueducts: The Answer to Rome's Water Troubles
Aqueducts: The Answer to Rome's Water Troubles Rome’s first raised aqueduct, Aqua Anio Vetus, was built in 273 BC; before that, people residing at higher elevations had to depend on local streams for their water. If citizens living at higher elevations did not have access to springs or the aqueduct, they’d have to be dependent on the other existing technologies of the time, cisterns that gathered rainwater from the sky and subterranean wells that drew the water from below ground. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, water was routed to Pincian Hill by way of the subterranean channel of Acqua Vergine. As originally constructed, the aqueduct was provided along the length of its channel with pozzi (manholes) constructed at regular intervals. The manholes made it easier to clean the channel, but it was also possible to use buckets to pull water from the aqueduct, as we saw with Cardinal Marcello Crescenzi when he owned the property from 1543 to 1552, the year he passed away. The cistern he had built to collect rainwater wasn’t satisfactory to meet his water demands.
That is when he decided to create an access point to the aqueduct that ran beneath his property.