Ancient Water and Aqueducts

The Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi features a jagged travertine rock base topped by a towering Egyptian obelisk that seems to defy gravity. Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed this fountain in sixteen fifty-one for Pope Innocent the Tenth to display…

The Fontana del Pantheon features a central marble basin topped by an Egyptian obelisk of red granite, all resting on a high plinth. Giacomo della Porta designed the fountain in fifteen seventy-five, but the obelisk only arrived a century…

The massive, circular brick rotunda standing near the Pantheon is the only remnant of the Terme di Agrippa. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa built this bath complex in the first century before Christ, creating the first public thermal baths in…

The Trevi Fountain anchors the end of the Acqua Vergine, an aqueduct that has carried water into Rome since nineteen before the common era. Its centerpiece is a massive marble Oceanus, the god of the sea, who rides a shell-shaped chariot…

Beneath the modern streets of Trevi sits the Vicus Caprarius, a sprawling labyrinth of brick walls and vaulted ceilings hidden nine meters underground. This was once a residential complex from the first century, transformed later into an…

The Rinascente department store on Via del Tritone holds a layer of Roman history beneath its basement floor. While the glass-and-steel exterior reflects the modern shopping district, the lower level preserves the remains of the Acqua…

A stone boat sits half-submerged in the basin at the center of the Piazza di Spagna. The Fontana della Barcaccia mimics a leaky, battered vessel taking on water. In fifteen twenty-seven, the Tiber River flooded, carrying a real wooden boat…