Where did Large Outdoor Fountains Begin?
Where did Large Outdoor Fountains Begin? The incredible architecture 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.Originally, fountains only served a practical purpose. Residents of cities, townships and small towns utilized them as a source of drinking water and a place to wash, which meant that fountains had to be connected to nearby aqueduct or spring. Up to the late nineteenth century, water fountains had to be near an aqueduct or reservoir and higher than the fountain so that gravity could make the water move downwards or shoot high into the air. Artists thought of fountains as wonderful additions to a living space, however, the fountains also served to provide clean water and honor the designer responsible for creating it. Bronze or stone masks of animals and heroes were commonly seen on Roman fountains. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden planners incorporated fountains to create smaller depictions of the gardens of paradise. To show his prominence over nature, French King Louis XIV included fountains in the Garden of Versailles. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries created baroque decorative fountains to glorify the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.
Indoor plumbing became the main source of water by the end of the 19th century thereby restricting urban fountains to mere decorative elements. Impressive water effects and recycled water were made possible by replacing the power of gravity with mechanical pumps.
Decorating city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the uses of modern-day fountains.
Rome’s Ingenious Water Delivery Solutions
Rome’s Ingenious Water Delivery Solutions With the building of the first elevated aqueduct in Rome, the Aqua Anio Vetus in 273 BC, people who lived on the city’s foothills no longer had to be dependent entirely on naturally-occurring spring water for their requirements. Throughout this period, there were only two other techniques capable of supplying water to elevated areas, subterranean wells and cisterns, which accumulated rainwater. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, water was routed to Pincian Hill via the underground channel of Acqua Vergine. The aqueduct’s channel was made attainable by pozzi, or manholes, that were placed along its length when it was first developed. While these manholes were created to make it less difficult to maintain the aqueduct, it was also possible to use buckets to extract water from the channel, which was done by Cardinal Marcello Crescenzi from the time he obtained the property in 1543 to his death in 1552. Apparently, the rainwater cistern on his property wasn’t enough to fulfill his needs.
To provide himself with a much more useful means to gather water, he had one of the manholes exposed, offering him access to the aqueduct below his property.