Contemporary Garden Decor: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Beginnings
Contemporary Garden Decor: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Beginnings A fountain, an amazing piece of engineering, not only supplies drinking water as it pours into a basin, it can also propel water high into the air for a noteworthy effect.The main purpose of a fountain was originally strictly practical. Cities, towns and villages made use of nearby aqueducts or springs to supply them with drinking water as well as water where they could bathe or wash. Used until the 19th century, in order for fountains to flow or shoot up into the air, their origin of water such as reservoirs or aqueducts, had to be higher than the water fountain in order to benefit from gravity.
Fountains were not only used as a water source for drinking water, but also to decorate homes and celebrate the designer who created it. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often times utilized by Romans to beautify their fountains. To depict the gardens of paradise, Muslim and Moorish garden planners of the Middle Ages added fountains to their designs. The fountains seen in the Gardens of Versailles were supposed to show the power over nature held by King Louis XIV of France. The Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries were glorified with baroque style fountains constructed to mark the arrival points of Roman aqueducts.
Since indoor plumbing became the norm 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 ornamental. Gravity was replaced by mechanical pumps in order to enable fountains to bring in clean water and allow for beautiful water displays.
Decorating city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the uses of modern-day fountains.
The First Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains
The First Contemporary Outdoor 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 scores of age-old texts from their original Greek into Latin. It was imperative for him to embellish the city of Rome to make it worthy of being known as the capital of the Christian world. At the bidding of the Pope, the Aqua Vergine, a ruined aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into Rome from eight miles away, was restored starting in 1453.
Building a mostra, an imposing commemorative fountain built by ancient Romans to memorialize the arrival point of an aqueduct, was a custom revived by Nicholas V. The Trevi Fountain now occupies the space formerly filled with a wall fountain built by Leon Battista Albert, an architect employed by the Pope. Modifications 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.