The first Roman aqueduct was the Aqua Appia, built in 312 BC during the Roman Republic. The methods of construction are described by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura written in the first century BC. His book would have been of great assistance to Frontinus, a general who was appointed in the late first century CE to administer the many aqueducts of Rome. He discovered a discrepancy between the intake and supply of water caused by illegal pipes inserted into the channels to divert the water, and reported on his efforts to improve and regulate the system to the emperor Trajan at the end of the first century AD. The report of his investigation is known as De aquaeductu. In addition to masonry aqueducts, the Romans built many more leats -- channels excavated in the ground, usually with a clay lining. They could serve industrial sites such as gold mines, lead and tin mines, forges, water-mills and baths or thermae. Leats were very much more expensive than the masonry design, but all aqueducts required good surveying to ensure a regular and smooth flow of water.
o Bridges
Roman bridges, built by ancient Romans, were the first large and lasting bridges built. Roman bridges were built with stone and had the arch as its basic structure. Most utilized concrete as well; which the Romans were the first to use for bridges.
Roman bridges could be built of wood if they needed to go up quickly, but those didn't last. Roman bridges made of stone, with repairs made as needed, are still in use today. When they were built, they would have helped move armies, serving as part of the road system.
As with the vault and the dome - the Romans were the first to fully realize the potential of arches for bridge construction.
A list of Roman bridges compiled by the engineer Colin O'Connor features 330Roman stone bridges for traffic, 34 Roman timber bridges and 54 Roman aqueduct bridges, a substantial part still standing and even used to carry vehicles. A more complete survey by the Italian scholar Vittorio Galliazzo found 931 Roman bridges, mostly of stone, in as many as 26 different countries (including former Yugoslavia; see right table).
Roman arch bridges were usually semicircular, although a few weresegmental (such as Alconйtar Bridge). A segmental arch is an arch that is less than a semicircle. The advantages of the segmental arch bridge were that it allowed great amounts of flood water to pass under it, which would prevent the bridge from being swept away during floods and the bridge itself could be more lightweight. Generally, Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones (voussoirs) of the same in size and shape. The Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard andSegovia Aqueduct. Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, e.g. in the Pons Fabricius in Rome (62 BC), one of the world's oldest major bridges still standing.
Roman engineers were the first and until the industrial revolution the only ones to construct bridges with concrete, which they called Opus caementicium. The outside was usually covered with brick or ashlar, as in the Alcбntara bridge.
The Romans also introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction. The 330 m long Limyra Bridge in southwestern Turkey features 26 segmental arches with an average span-to-rise ratio of 5.3:1, giving the bridge an unusually flat profile unsurpassed for more than a millennium. Trajan's bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood (standing on 40 m high concrete piers). This was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length, while the longest extant Roman bridge is the 790 m long Puente Romano at Mйrida.
The late Roman Karamagara Bridge in Cappadocia may represent the earliest surviving bridge featuring a pointed arch.
o Walls
Hadrian' s Wall. Hadrian' s Wall is one of the best known Roman walls. Located in northern England, it was started by the Roman Emperor to keep the northerners out of Roman Britain.
Hadrian was born on January 24, 76 A.D. He died on July 10, 138, having been emperor since 117. He counted his dies imperii August 11, although his predecessor had died some days earlier. During Hadrian's rule he worked on reforms and consolidated the Roman provinces. Hadrian toured his empire for 11 years.
Not all was peaceful. When Hadrian tried to build a temple to Jupiter on the site of Solomon's temple, the Jews revolted in a war lasting three years. His relations with the Christians were generally not confrontational, but during Hadrian's stay in Greece (123-127) he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, according to Eusebius, and then, with new-found pagan zeal, persecuted local Christians.
It is claimed Trajan, his adoptive father, had not wanted Hadrian to succeed him, but was thwarted by his wife, Plotina, who covered up her husband's death until she could make sure of Hadrian's acceptance by the senate. After Hadrian became emperor, suspicious circumstance surrounded the assassination of leading military figures from Trajan's reign. Hadrian denied involvement.
Mementos of Hadrian's reign persist in the form of coins and the many building projects he undertook. Most famous is the wall across Britain that was named Hadrian's Wall after him. Hadrian's Wall was built, beginning in 122, to keep Roman Britain safe from hostile attacks from the Picts. It was the northernmost boundary of the Roman Empire until early in the fifth century.
Today many of the stones have been carted away and recycled into other buildings, but the wall is still there for people to explore and walk along, although this is discouraged.
Antonine Wall. The Antonine Wall is a sixty kilometer wall north of Hadrian's Wall built by the Romans in Britian to keep the Picts at bay during the reign of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 142-155). Hadrian died in July 138. Reversing his predecessor's policy of solidification instead of expansion, Antoninus Pius ordered a northward advance and built a new wall called the Antonine Wall. It was completed by soldiers from Legions II, VI, and XX in the 140s and stretched 37 miles from the Forth to the Clyde, following Scotland's Central Valley. In front of the wall was a ditch. Forts were located at about 8 miles intervals. There are also secondary forts too small for entire regiments. Hadrian's wall is thought to have been abanoned in around 140 in favor of the Antonine Wall and then re-occupied in 158. It was then thought that the Antonine Wall was reoccupied under the other Antonine emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
The Servian Wall. The Roman King Servius Tullius is credited with building the Servian Wall in the 6th century B.C. but archaeological study of the building material suggests it actually dates to the fourth century B.C. The Servian Wall ran from the Tiber to the Capitoline Hill to the Quirinal, to the valley between the Quirinal and the Pincian, towards the Esquiline, to the valley between the mons Oppius and the Caelian, along the cliffs on the south and southeast of the Caelian, then probably along the southwest side of the Palatine, then south of the forum Boarium and to the Tiber at the Sublician Bridge (pons Sublicius).
Impact of Politics and Religion on Roman Architecture
In 330 CE, about the time St Peter's Basilica was completed, the Roman Emperor Constantine I declared that the city of Byzantium (later renamed Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey), was to be the capital of the Roman Empire. Later, in 395 CE, following the death of Emperor Theodosius, the empire was divided into two parts: a Western half based first in Rome until it was sacked in the 5th century CE, then Ravenna; and an eastern half based in the more powerful and secure city of Constantinople. In addition, Christianity (previously a minority sect) was declared the sole official religion throughout the empire. These twin developments impacted on architecture in two ways: first, relocation to Constantinople helped to preserve and prolong Roman culture, which might otherwise have been destroyed by the barbarian invaders of Italy; second, the emergence of Christianity provided what became the dominant theme of architecture and the visual arts for the next 1,200 years.
Sources
§ Adam, Jean-Pierre, Roman Building: Materials and Techniques, Indiana University Press, 1994
§ MacDonald, William L., The Architecture of the Roman Empire II: An Urban Appraisal, Yale University Press, 1986
§ Sear, Frank, Roman Architecture, Cornell University Press, 1989
§ Wilson-Jones, Mark, Principles of Roman Architecture, Yale University Press, 2000
§ "Regionaries-Type Insulae 2: Architectural/Residential Units at Rome," by Glenn R. StoreyAmerican Journal of Archaeology 2002.
§ "The Medianum and the Roman Apartment," by G. Hermansen. Phoenix, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1970), pp. 342-347.
§ "The Rental Market in Early Imperial Rome," by Bruce Woodward Frier. The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 67, (1977), pp. 27-37.
§ A handbook of Architectural Styles, by Albert Rosengarten; translated by W. Collett-Sandars (1876).
§ http://en.wikipedia.org
§ http://www.visual-arts-cork.com
§ http://ancienthistory.about.com
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