The Source of Today's Wall Fountains

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The Source of Today's Wall Fountains Himself a highly educated man, Pope Nicholas V led the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 till 1455 and was responsible for the translation of hundreds of age-old documents from their original Greek into Latin. He undertook the beautification of Rome to turn it into the worthy seat of the Christian world. In 1453 the Pope commissioned the rebuilding of the Aqua Vergine, an ancient Roman aqueduct which had carried fresh drinking water into the city from eight miles away. A mostra, a monumental dedicatory fountain constructed by ancient Romans to mark the point of entry of an aqueduct, was a custom which was revived by Nicholas V. At the behest of the Pope, architect Leon Battista Alberti began the construction of a wall fountain in the place where we now find the Trevi Fountain. Changes and extensions, included in the restored aqueduct, eventually provided the Trevi Fountain and the well-known baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona with the necessary water supply.

Aqueducts: The Remedy to Rome's Water Problems

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Aqueducts: The Remedy to Rome's Water Problems Rome’s very first elevated aqueduct, Aqua Anio Vetus, was built in 273 BC; before that, inhabitants living at higher elevations had to rely on natural creeks for their water. Outside of these aqueducts and springs, wells and rainwater-collecting cisterns were the lone technological innovations readily available at the time to supply water to areas of high elevation. In the early sixteenth century, the city began to utilize the water that flowed below ground through Acqua Vergine to provide water to Pincian Hill. Throughout the length of the aqueduct’s route were pozzi, or manholes, that gave access. The manholes made it less demanding to thoroughly clean the channel, but it was also achievable to use buckets to extract water from the aqueduct, as we saw with Cardinal Marcello Crescenzi when he bought the property from 1543 to 1552, the year he passed away. It appears that, the rainwater cistern on his property wasn’t sufficient to satisfy his needs. By using an orifice to the aqueduct that flowed underneath his property, he was able to reach his water demands.