Parco degli Acquedotti

Park · Appio Claudio (Tuscolano)Rome,Italy

Open grass at Rome's edge crossed by the arches of six ancient aqueducts, the tallest dry and a papal one beside them still carrying water.

Parco degli Acquedotti is a field of open grass with Roman aqueducts running across it. Six of the eleven aqueducts that watered ancient Rome ran through this ground, and a seventh, papal one joined them. The tall broken arches are the Aqua Claudia, finished under the emperor Claudius in 52 AD and carrying a second line, the Anio Novus, stacked on top of the first. Lower down, three older channels were built one above another on a single wall. The oldest of all runs underground and shows nothing at the surface. The line that still carries water is the newest. In 1585 a pope set out to bring water back to the hills of a shrunken city, and the Acqua Felice was finished two years later, partly on reused Roman arches. So the arches you photograph are dry and the modest ones beside them are working. There is nothing else here: no gate, no ticket office, no café. Sheep graze between the piers, Roman families walk dogs, and the shell of a farmhouse stands in the middle of it. Postwar directors came here to film the edge of the city, and it still looks like the edge of the city.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come in the first hour of light or the last — the arches are only photogenic when the sun is low behind or across them, and midday flattens the whole field.
Carry your own water and expect no shade — there is no fountain along the aqueduct line and nothing to buy, which is a real problem here in July and August.
Skip it for a few days after heavy rain — the paths are bare earth between the piers and they turn to deep mud that dries slowly.
Look for the channel on top of the arches — where the masonry is broken you can see the water conduit itself, lined with waterproof plaster and no wider than a person.

Things to do

1
Walk the line of the arches
Pick up the path under the tallest arcade and follow it as far as it goes. The arches run in a straight line to the horizon, rising and falling with the ground, and the scale only registers when you have been walking beside them for ten minutes and they are still going.
2
Stand under an arch at sunrise
Arrive before sunrise and stand directly under one of the arches. At that hour the sun is low and shines straight down the line of arches instead of across them, and the grass is grey with dew. Apart from one jogger and some sheep you will have a kilometre of field to yourself.
3
Find the three channels stacked on one wall
Away from the big arcade, look for a lower, plainer wall running through the grass. Three separate aqueducts were carried on it, one above another, built more than a century apart. Where the face has fallen away you can see the three conduits in section, like a cut through a pipe.