Where did Large Outdoor Fountains Begin?
Where did Large Outdoor Fountains Begin? A water fountain is an architectural piece that pours water into a basin or jets it high into the air in order to supply drinkable water, as well as for decorative purposes.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, from aqueducts or springs in the area.
Used until the nineteenth century, in order for fountains to flow or shoot up into the air, their source of water such as reservoirs or aqueducts, had to be higher than the water fountain in order to benefit from the power of gravity. Fountains were an optimal source of water, and also served to adorn living areas and memorialize the artist. Roman fountains usually depicted imagery of animals or heroes made of metal or stone masks. Muslims and Moorish landscaping designers of the Middle Ages included fountains to re-create smaller models of the gardens of paradise. The fountains found in the Gardens of Versailles were supposed to show the power over nature held by King Louis XIV of France. The Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries were glorified with baroque style fountains constructed to mark the place of entry of Roman aqueducts.
Urban fountains built at the end of the nineteenth functioned only as decorative and celebratory adornments since indoor plumbing provided the necessary drinking water. Gravity was substituted by mechanical pumps in order to enable fountains to bring in clean water and allow for beautiful water displays.
Beautifying city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the functions of modern-day fountains.
Rome’s Early Water Delivery Solutions
Rome’s Early Water Delivery Solutions With the manufacturing of the very first raised aqueduct in Rome, the Aqua Anio Vetus in 273 BC, people who lived on the city’s foothills no longer had to be dependent solely on naturally-occurring spring water for their demands. Outside of these aqueducts and springs, wells and rainwater-collecting cisterns were the sole technological innovations around at the time to supply water to locations of high elevation. From the early sixteenth century, water was routed to Pincian Hill through the underground channel of Acqua Vergine.
Spanning the length of the aqueduct’s passage were pozzi, or manholes, that gave access. The manholes made it more straightforward to thoroughly clean the channel, but it was also possible to use buckets to remove water from the aqueduct, as we witnessed with Cardinal Marcello Crescenzi when he bought the property from 1543 to 1552, the year he died. The cistern he had made to collect rainwater wasn’t adequate to meet his water requirements. To provide himself with a much more efficient way to assemble water, he had one of the manholes opened up, providing him access to the aqueduct below his residence.