The Origins Of Garden Fountains
The Origins Of Garden 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 enhance your home.Originally, fountains only served a functional purpose. People in cities, towns and villages received their drinking water, as well as water to bathe and wash, from aqueducts or springs in the vicinity. 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 flow downwards or shoot high into the air. Acting as an element of adornment and celebration, fountains also supplied clean, fresh drinking water. Roman fountains usually depicted imagery of animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden designers included fountains in their designs to re-create the gardens of paradise. Fountains played a significant role in the Gardens of Versailles, all part of French King Louis XIV’s desire to exert his power over nature.
To mark the entrance of the restored Roman aqueducts, the Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries commissioned the building of baroque style fountains in the spot where the aqueducts arrived in the city of Rome
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 decorative. The introduction of special water effects and the recycling of water were 2 things made possible by swapping gravity with mechanical pumps.
Beautifying city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the uses of modern-day fountains.
The Origins of Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains
The Origins of Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains
Pope Nicholas V, himself a learned man, reigned the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455 during which time he commissioned many translations of ancient classic Greek documents into Latin. It was imperative for him to beautify the city of Rome to make it worthy of being known as the capital of the Christian world. In 1453 the Pope commissioned the reconstruction of the Aqua Vergine, an ancient Roman aqueduct which had carried fresh drinking water into the city from eight miles away. The historical Roman custom of marking the entry point of an aqueduct with an imposing celebratory fountain, also known as a mostra, was restored by Nicholas V. At the behest of the Pope, architect Leon Battista Alberti undertook the construction of a wall fountain in the place where we now find the Trevi Fountain. Modifications and extensions, included in the repaired aqueduct, eventually supplied the Trevi Fountain and the well-known baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona with the necessary water supply.