Water, worries and wonders

While the Greeks excelled at grace, beauty and elegance in construction, the Romans were giants of engineering, solidity and problem solving. Not many bits of Roman construction have I seen more stunning than the 1st century Roman aqueduct that began at its source, the Eure River at Uzes, and stretched 50 winding kilometres south to the baths, pools, fountains and homes of the fast-developing Roman city of Nimes. 

Partway along this aqueduct Roman engineers built an arched Roman viaduct bridge, which carried the water along its top tier: this is the famed Pont du Gard. Today, this bridge is one of the top tourist sites in France, a UNESCO site, and has been enthused over by poets, philosophers, stone masons and engineers since the day it was built, so, of course, we had to skip west into the Gard department to visit it. 

The Pont du Gard, itself, is beautiful enough to write a poem about. Aesthetically it is beautiful enough to be a Greek monument. It has three graceful arches of virtually dry-stone construction, quite astonishing! The stones to build it were precision-cut, and individual blocks, some as heavy as six tons. They were lifted into perfect position by massive revolving wheels and pulleys. Engineers left symbols and roman numerals on individually shaped stones advising builders of the required placement. We could still see many of these hieroglyphs high in the arches as we walked across the bridge. 

During construction, the open arcs of the arches were framed with wooden scaffolding and, even today, stones that were built to support these wooden structures, are still visible. Once the bridge was complete the wooden forms were cut away. 

It is not so much the bridge that is sensational, although it is. It is the enormity of the problems that the engineers faced and successfully overcame along the entire length of this water channel that speaks to the genius of this entire piece of work. Not only the thorough exploration of the surrounding terrain that determined the eventual design of this aquaduct is remarkable, but the decisions about how to get it working are amazing. 

Imagine thrashing out the pros and cons of building a length of channel 30kms underground and a further 20 kms aboveground with all those associated headaches. Or sussing out solutions for the preventative care for the base of the bridge, determining how it might withstand powerful potential floods. Or estimating how to keep water flowing for 50 curly kilometres under and above ground when you only have an astonishingly small 17 metre drop from source to city to play with. Or the complex reasoning needed to create the variable drops that then evolved in order to keep the water flowing. 

And the water did flow. The first drops took 27 hours to reach the city from the river. After that 200,000,000 litres flowed every single day for nearly 1,000 years and satisfied the Nimes demand. Utterly amazing! 

Added to which the French Government built a gobsmacking state-of-the-art Visitor’s Centre at the Pont du Gard site, to the tune of €32 million, filled with exhibition floors, museum displays, theatres and salons detailing and clarifying elements of construction. 

Yet, back in Eus, we have our little ne’er-do-well-du-maison that is constantly overflowing, causing hazards in the narrow streets. It has had the best minds in the Department bent to breaking for weeks, months and even some years to date, and still they’ve come up short on solutions for it. Call in the Romans, I say!

Arched acquaduct near Nikes

Pont du Gard