Where did Fountains Come From?

Where did Fountains Come From? A fountain, an amazing piece of engineering, not only supplies drinking water as it pours into a basin, it can also launch water high into the air for a noteworthy effect.

Originally, fountains only served a practical purpose. 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 to the late nineteenth century, water fountains had to be near an aqueduct or reservoir and more elevated than the fountain so that gravity could make the water flow downwards or shoot high into the air. Artists thought of fountains as amazing additions to a living space, however, the fountains also served to provide clean water and honor the designer responsible for creating it. Fountains Come From? 6572257254642008381.jpg Bronze or stone masks of wildlife and heroes were commonly seen on Roman fountains. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden designers included fountains in their designs to re-create the gardens of paradise. To demonstrate his dominance 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 exalt the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.

Urban fountains built at the end of the 19th century served only as decorative and celebratory ornaments since indoor plumbing provided the essential drinking water. Fountains using mechanical pumps instead of gravity helped fountains to bring recycled water into living spaces as well as create special water effects.

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

The History of Wall Fountains

The History of Wall Fountains Hundreds of classic Greek texts were translated into Latin under the authority of the scholarly Pope Nicholas V, who ruled the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455. He undertook the embellishment of Rome to turn it into the worthy capital of the Christian world. Restoration of the Acqua Vergine, a ruined Roman aqueduct which had transported fresh drinking water into the city from eight miles away, began in 1453 at the bidding of the Pope. The ancient Roman custom of building an imposing commemorative fountain at the location where an aqueduct arrived, also known as a mostra, was revived by Nicholas V. The present-day location of the Trevi Fountain was once occupied by a wall fountain commissioned by the Pope and constructed by the architect Leon Battista Alberti. The water which eventually provided the Trevi Fountain as well as the acclaimed baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona came from the modified aqueduct which he had renovated.