Agrippa’s Marvelous Water-lifting Machine

Sadly, Agrippa’s excellent design for raising water wasn’t referred to much following 1588, when Andrea Bacci acclaimed it widely. It could be that in 1592 when Rome’s latest conduit, the Acqua Felice, set about delivering the Villa Medici, there was no longer much use for the device. The more probable conclusion is that the system was forgotten when Franceso di Medici, Ferdinando’s brotherpassed away in 1588, leading him to give up his job as cardinal and go back to Florence where he accepted the throne as the Grand Duke of Tuscany. There may have been different impressive water-related works in Renaissance landscapes in the later part of the sixteenth century, just like fountains that played tunes, water caprices (or giochi d’acqua) and also scenographic water exhibits, but nothing was powered by water which defied the force of gravity.

Aqueducts: The Answer to Rome's Water Problems

Aqueducts: The Answer to Rome's Water Problems Aqua Anio Vetus, the first raised aqueduct founded in Rome, started off supplying the men and women living in the hills with water in 273 BC, though they had depended on natural springs up till then. Aqueducts: Answer Rome's Water Problems 6100961670.jpg

Aqueducts: Answer Rome's Water Problems 6100961670.jpg

If citizens residing at higher elevations did not have access to springs or the aqueduct, they’d have to be dependent on the remaining existing solutions of the time, cisterns that collected rainwater from the sky and subterranean wells that received the water from under ground. To deliver water to Pincian Hill in the early sixteenth century, they implemented the emerging method of redirecting the current from the Acqua Vergine aqueduct’s underground network. As originally constructed, the aqueduct was provided along the length of its channel with pozzi (manholes) constructed at regular intervals. Though they were originally planned to make it possible to service the aqueduct, Cardinal Marcello Crescenzi started using the manholes to collect water from the channel, commencing when he obtained the property in 1543. Reportedly, the rainwater cistern on his property wasn’t sufficient to fulfill his needs. Via an orifice to the aqueduct that flowed under his property, he was able to fulfill his water desires.