Where did Landscape Fountains Come From?

Where did Landscape Fountains Come From? The dramatic or decorative effect of a fountain is just one of the purposes it fulfills, in addition to delivering drinking water and adding a decorative touch to your property.

Pure practicality was the original role of fountains. People in cities, towns and villages received their drinking water, as well as water to bathe and wash, via aqueducts or springs in the area. Up until the nineteenth, fountains had to be higher and closer to a water source, including aqueducts and reservoirs, in order to benefit from gravity which fed the fountains. Acting as an element of decoration and celebration, fountains also provided clean, fresh drinking water. Bronze or stone masks of animals and heroes were frequently seen on Roman fountains. Throughout the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden planners incorporated fountains to create smaller depictions of the gardens of paradise. To show his dominance over nature, French King Louis XIV included fountains in the Garden of Versailles. Seventeen and 18 century Popes sought to laud their positions by including beautiful baroque-style fountains at the point where restored Roman aqueducts arrived into the city.

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. Gravity was replaced by mechanical pumps in order to permit fountains to bring in clean water and allow for amazing water displays.

Decorating city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the uses of modern-day fountains.

The Source of Modern Day Wall Fountains

The Source of Modern Day Wall Fountains Pope Nicholas V, himself a well educated man, reigned the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455 during which time he commissioned many translations of old classic Greek texts into Latin. In order to make Rome worthy of being the capital of the Christian world, the Pope resolved to enhance the beauty of the city. In 1453 the Pope commissioned the reconstruction of the Aqua Vergine, an historic Roman aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into the city from eight miles away. The ancient Roman tradition of marking the entry point of an aqueduct with an magnificent celebratory fountain, also known as a mostra, was restored by Nicholas V. The present-day site of the Trevi Fountain was formerly occupied by a wall fountain commissioned by the Pope and built by the architect Leon Battista Alberti. The Trevi Fountain as well as the renowned baroque fountains found in the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona were eventually supplied with water from the modified aqueduct he had reconstructed.