Roman Aqueduct of Reims
About
Roman engineers built a 44-kilometer channel around 20 CE to carry water from springs at Jonchery-sur-Suippe into Durocortorum, feeding the city's public baths and fountains for roughly four centuries. A single arched masonry fragment of that system survives today beside Place Royale, though nearly everything else lies buried under the modern street grid. The channel had already been delivering water to the Remi capital for almost a century by the time Trajan died in August 117 CE.
What happened here
Water arrives day and night and never stops. The channel runs mostly underground, following a shallow gradient measured out with a levelling instrument over tens of miles, and it goes up on arches only where the ground drops away. Inspection shafts sit at intervals; gangs work the line constantly, cutting out the lime crust that thickens on the walls and narrows the flow. At the town end the water is divided in a distribution tank — public fountains first by law, then baths, then private houses whose owners have paid for a pipe of a fixed and stamped size. Illegal tappings are a permanent scandal. What arrives is not stored but runs continuously, and the overflow flushes the drains.
Sources
Nearby
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →