Aqueduct of Salona
About
Augustus's engineers channeled the Jadro spring's karst water 3,850 meters downhill to Salona, sizing the line for a city of just 15 hectares. Two centuries later the same channel was still watering a metropolis nearly five times that size, before Avar and Slav raiders finally silenced it in the 7th century. In 117 CE the line had already run without a major rebuild for roughly a century.
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
_02.jpg?width=800)
.jpg?width=800)
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 →