Title of the article: Even today part of a roman aqueduct dating back to the 2nd century bc. supplies the city of Rome with water (our proposal to give it still a long life) by LAMANNA Luigi Franco (*)
Photo 01 - The great beauties of the eternal city
Premise It is my duty to make a premise. How does the old Roman aqueduct look like in Rome? He's really in a bad way. In fact, out of the 5,400 kilometers of pipelines present (of which 499 km, still in use, date back to ancient Rome), the dispersion on the territory of Rome is 44.1%, against a national average of 39%. This means that almost half of the water taken from the five aqueducts in the Lazio region is lost, the main one, the Peschiera-Capore, alone provides 70% of Rome's daily needs. Potenza (Italy) is at the top of the ranking of wasteful cities (68.8 %%) while Milan (Italy) is the most virtuous capital: here only 6.6% of drinking water leaks from the broken pipes of the aqueduct. In other words, that's 55 liters per person per day. In Naples (Italy) 35.7% is wasted, 54.6% in Palermo (Italy) and almost 60% in Cagliari (Italy). Things are not going well even in Trieste (Italy) 46.8%, Trento (Italy) 32.6% and Aosta (Italy) 24.5%.
Construction type of the aqueducts of ancient Rome An aqueduct is an infrastructure built to transport water from springs to an inhabited place. It is basically a conduit made in square work or in concrete and lined internally with “coccio pesto" to waterproof it; this conduit is always fully covered to protect the water it carries from external contamination (earth, animals); the internal cavity in which the water flows is called "speco". The "speco" had such dimensions as to allow the comfortable passage of a man, in order to allow the maintenance of the same by removing the limestone that over the years deposited on the walls over the years and the bottom.