eternallycool.net

Almost anyone who loves Rome will tell you that one of the city’s most compelling features is its abundance of water.  While tourists are wowed by gurgling fountains in charming piazzas (and rightly so), the city’s connection to H20 is much deeper.  From the murky Tiber River to colossal Baroque displays and from street-side drinking fountains to the ruins of ancient aqueducts, the history of Rome is written in water.

To find out more about Rome’s fluid history, we paid a visit to Prof. Katherine Rinne who teaches architecture at the California College of the Arts.  Katherine has spent years studying every aspect of Rome’s water system and is the director of a project called Aquae Urbis Romae, the goal of which is to increase understanding of the profound relationships that exist between water systems and urbanism in Rome.

We understand that you’re the go-to woman when it comes to questions about water in Rome.  Can you tell us a bit about how you came to be interested in the city’s watery past?

It will sound corny, but I saw “Three Coins in a Fountain” when I was really young – maybe 5 years old – and I instantly fell in love with the idea of Rome and with the Trevi Fountain.  Later I received 3 copies of H.V. Morton’s The Fountains of Rome as gifts over a period of about 15 years.  By the third time, in 1985, I finally realized that perhaps my friends knew something about me that I didn’t.

What kind of professional and/or academic training led you to this project?

I trained as an architect and then had the good fortune to work on really large-scale urban projects.  I was one of hundreds of young designers working on the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (which allowed me to think of design at the scale of the city).  Later I landed a job with Johnson Fain Partners in Los Angeles, an architecture firm that tackled really large-scale projects.  One project was the Greenway Proposal for Metropolitan Los Angeles that identified and then used existing infrastructure as the backbone for a new integrated green infrastructure that would operate at the scale of the region.  By that time I was already interested in water in Rome, but I saw that I needed to address the regional scale rather than look at single fountains the way most architects do.

How did you come to know Rome’s water systems—past and present—so well?  Did you study maps?  Did you read books?  Or was it an on-the-ground kind of investigation that gave you such an impressive knowledge of aqueducts, drains, sewers, and such?

I spent four months walking Rome, street-by-street, day in and day out to document Rome’s water infrastructure as a way to begin this investigation.  For 8 to 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, I walked, took photographs, drew and made notes about anything and everything I saw that was connected with water – whether fountains, flood markers, nasone (street drinking fountains), aqueduct fragments, even dog fountains, etc.

On rainy days I went to various archives and libraries and read anything that might tell me more about Rome’s water history.  I did this before I knew what I was looking for.  I hadn’t formulated a research question yet. Later I spent 3 years in the archives of Rome pouring through dusty records of the Vatican and the Roman Council, etc. So it was a combination of physical research and archival research that allowed me to generate what I think are new questions about water and urban development.  I don’t think I could have conceived this project if I hadn’t come to it with the eyes of an architect who has actually designed infrastructure at the scale of the city and the region.

Almost everyone knows that the ancient Romans had an extraordinary system by which fresh water was brought to the city and visitors and residents can still see remains of the aqueducts that carried water in from the countryside. Can you tell us a bit about it? 

There was a lot of water available in ancient Rome – especially from 144 BC when the Aqua Marcia was completed until 537 AD when the invading Goth armies sabotaged the aqueduct system.  In total there were 11 aqueducts that served the entire city and the Roman Campagna.  But, still most people went to the public fountains for water.  For the most part, only institutions, Imperial facilities, and the wealthy had piped water.

Many of the aqueducts are cut in the Middle Ages, but not all, correct?

Actually only one ancient aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo, survived the Goth attack of 537 AD. But over the next 400 years or so, the Virgo and 3 other aqueducts were restored: the Claudia, the Traiana, and either the Marcia or the Alexandrina.  There is still debate about that last one.  None were restored to their former glory, but at least they provided water to the Janiculum, the Esquiline, the Caelian and the Campus Martius area.  But, by this time the Church maintained the aqueducts and what few public fountains that existed.  Also, a lot of the water went directly to monasteries which then acted as a type of distribution hub for the surrounding neighborhood.  But, by the 10th century, only the Virgo was still functioning, although fitfully.

If fresh water was hard to come by in Rome in the Middle Ages, what were the various methods by which Romans might access it?

Cisterns must have been common.  They could store rainwater that fell on the hard tile roofs, and it is entirely possible that every building would have devised some way to capture and store at least a small amount.  There were also wells.  Rome has a very high water table so it wouldn’t take much to reach it, at least in the Campus Martius.

The Aqua Virgo continued to supply some water to the low areas of the city near to the Trevi fountain. There are also quite a few springs in Rome, although most were probably privately controlled.  The Vatican even had a small aqueduct called the Acqua Damasiana that was built in the 4th century AD to bring water from a spring about a mile outside the Vatican walls.  That spring still continues to flow.

There were also Acquaeroli, water sellers, who went to the Tiber River to fill barrels with water which they then decanted for about a week and then sold from door to door on donkeys – somewhat like the Arrowhead delivery service of my youth.  Some of the water sellers were also allowed to collect water from the Trevi Fountain to sell.

We’ve heard you argue that the Renaissance in Rome really begins in 1570, when Popes Pius IV and Pius V restore some of the water supply.  Can you explain to us how that act changes Rome and how its effects might constitute a “Renaissance?”

First, without a pure water supply there was no way that Rome could support a large population.  Also, the water supply that did exist in the mid-sixteenth century was terribly polluted – so even though the Tiber supply is essentially endless, it was detrimental.  Pius V (who reigned from 1566-72) in particular was interested in creating a healthier environment for Rome.  He was pretty zealous.  For him that meant not only restoring aqueducts in order to improve water quality, but also getting rid of prostitutes to restore morality.  At a very basic level he saw these ideas as linked to the idea of “Renovatio Romae” – an effort to return Rome to her former grander and also to return moral authority to the Catholic Church.  To restore water was to restore Rome.

In 1570 the Aqua Virgo, which we now call the Acqua Vergine, was restored and provided water to the Campus Martius.  Then in 1587 the Acqua Felice (which reused ancient springs) was completed and brought water to the Esquiline, Caelian and Pincian hills.  In 1612 the Acqua Paola was able to serve the Borgo, Trastevere and the Janiculum.  Within a little over 40 years Rome, which had been little more than a glorified medieval city, was poised to become the most important and beautiful city in Europe.

How does Rome’s modern water system compare to its ancient system?

Well, all three early modern aqueducts – the Virgo, Felice and Paola – reuse ancient springs and follow (more or less) ancient routes.  The gravity flow technology is the same and, at least until the late 19th century, they served the same areas that they had in antiquity.  There are now 3 more aqueducts and they all utilize mechanical pumps to distribute water to high elevations like the Janiculum and the Esquiline hills.  But even there, much of the water still flows through gravity.

Sometimes Rome’s visitors and residents worry about all the water that’s flowing freely through the city’s fountains.  It certainly makes the city more beautiful and refreshes one on a hot day, but isn’t it wasteful?

Fountains like the Moses Fountain in Largo Santa Susanna and the Fontanone on the Janiculum were originally designed as central distribution points in that once the water left the aqueduct it would be distributed in conduits out into the city from these points.

While the water in Rome’s fountains is always flowing – it’s a gravity system – it isn’t necessarily as wasteful as you might imagine – especially in the Campus Martius, which is pretty flat.  The water performs a necessary function – it flushes the sewers.  You can’t shut the water off.

In the interest of water conservation Rome began to re-circulate the water in the Trevi fountain in the 1930s.  Now several fountains, including the Moses, the Fontanone, the Naiad Fountain in Piazza della Repubblica, and the Turtle Fountain in Piazza Mattei, among others, all use re-circulate water on a one-week cycle.  This explains why during the summer there are days when there hardly seems to be any water in the Trevi – it has evaporated during the week.

We understand you have a book coming out and we can’t wait to read it! Can you give us some details about it and tell us when to expect it?

Well, the working title is still a little boring “Water and Urbanism in Early Modern Rome”.  I’ve floated about 20 titles to the publishers and none of us are really satisfied yet.  Any ideas, anyone?

The book will be published by Yale University Press and is scheduled to come out next year.  It is a social, cultural, aesthetic, topographic and technological history of water and urban development between about 1560 and 1630.  In the book I look at some of the myriad ways in which the new water supply changed the city.  Some changes were major – like the re-population of the hills, and others seem minor – like the provision of laundry fountains so that women wouldn’t have to go to the Tiber River to wash clothes.  I look at water as a commodity that could be used to buy and sell favors particularly between the pope and the cardinals who served him.  I look at the ways in which technology and administrative functions were advanced in the process of developing a distribution system for the water.  I spend a chapter examining the role of the Tiber River in Rome’s history and another chapter on the roads and sewers and how they relate to the fresh water supply.  I think it will be a pretty expansive examination of the subject.  I’m excited.

If you liked this interview, join the Aquae Urbis Romae fanclub on Facebook.