These aqueducts sometimes ran for very long distances. For instance, the aqueduct of Valens, which brought water to the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), was 250 miles (400 kilometers) long, according to a statement from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
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Roman surveyors had to design a route carefully. "To choose a route with the necessary gradient, Roman surveyors would have either used the libra or the dioptra," Joseph Lewis, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science in an email.
The exact design of the libra is unclear, but we know that it had a plumb bob that was suspended in the air and the surveyor could compare it to rods in the ground to help determine differences in ground height. "Surveyors would set the libra up along proposed routes for the aqueduct and look forward and backward against calibrated staves," Lewis explained, noting that this allowed them to determine differences in ground height.
Building a long-lasting aqueduct
A Roman aqueduct crossing a river at Pont du Gard in France. (Image credit: PASCAL GUYOT via Getty Images)
"Roman concrete certainly played an important role, especially in bridges, arcades, and other structural elements," Giovanni De Feo, a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Salerno in Italy, said in an email.
"I believe their remarkable preservation results from a combination of factors," De Feo said. For example, the Romans were careful to select routes that followed stable geological formations.
Aqueducts did not always run aboveground; sometimes, they had lengthy underground portions in areas where the landscapes made it difficult to place it aboveground. Some "aqueducts had hardly any stretches above ground outside the city, while others ran on arches for a considerable distance," Gerda de Kleijn, a researcher at Radboud University in the Netherlands, wrote in her book "The Water Supply of Ancient Rome" (J.C. Gieben, 2001).
The number of workers required to build an aqueduct depended on its size and timeline for completion. The Hadrianic aqueduct at Athens, which runs for about 12.4 miles (20 km), could have been completed in 15 years by a team of around 500 workers, researchers estimated in a 2022 paper.
Part of a Roman aqueduct in Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast. (Image credit: Richard Nowitz Photography via Getty Images)Maintaining the aqueduct
Related mysteriesAfter an aqueduct was built, regular maintenance kept it in good shape. Cees Passchier, head of tectonophysics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, has studied a Roman aqueduct at Divona in France. In a 2023 study, Passchier and colleagues found that carbonate would have built up on the aqueduct over time. Maintenance workers "partly scraped away" the carbonate before replastering the aqueduct, Passchier told Live Science in an email. At some other aqueducts, they wouldn't bother scraping but would "simply plaster over the carbonate without ever cleaning anything," he said.
Even after the Roman Empire collapsed, many of its aqueducts survived, as some were used and maintained into the Middle Ages and even into modern times. One of the aqueducts, the Aqua Virgo, built in 19 B.C., is still bringing water to Rome today.
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