For almost four centuries academics have sought the headwaters of the Aqua Traiana, a stone channel that carried spring water down to Rome from near Lake Bracciano. Now, two British filmmakers say they have beaten the archaeologists in discovering the source of the water feeding the ancient city’s greatest aqueducts.
While researching films on Roman aqueducts, Mike and Ted O’Neill got access last year to a series of reservoirs and tunnels below a long-abandoned medieval chapel near the town of Bracciano.
Local people believed the complex was created in late Renaissance times. But Ted O’Neill, 37, who has made a study of ancient hydraulic engineering, said he was struck by the criss-cross patterned wall facing of the tunnels.
“It is known as opus reticulatum. And opus reticulatum says ‘I am [ancient] Roman,’” he said.
The London-born brothers took Italy’s leading authority on classical aqueducts to the site. Lorenzo Quilici, a professor at Bologna University, said on Sunday: “It is a truly exceptional discovery. There is no doubt that the construction techniques used are ancient Roman.”
Quilici said the abandoned chapel, known as the Madonna of the Flower, was originally a nympheum, a place dedicated to the water spirits of classical mythology.
“On either side it widens into two basins that are roofed with quite extraordinary vaults, still decorated with Egyptian blue [calcium copper silicate] paint,” Quilici said.
Allan Ceen, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, said of the site: “It is so richly decorated the emperor almost certainly came here for the inauguration of the aqueduct.”
That was in 109AD, under the emperor Trajan, 19 centuries before its rediscovery. To celebrate the event a fountain was built on Janiculum hill where the aqueduct entered the city. A coin was minted showing a god atop tumbling water, reclining under a broad arch. It had been assumed the arch belonged to the fountain. But the O’Neill brothers believe the coin depicts the nympheum, a theory Quilici thinks should be taken seriously.
Not the least important aspect of the complex is that the water, which came from an aquifer, seeped into the reservoirs on either side of the nympheum through bricks laid with gaps between them.
“It was a filter,” Quilici said.
The original Aqua Traiana, one of Rome’s 11 great aqueducts, snaked around Lake Bracciano collecting water from other springs before heading south. At the entry point to the ancient city the aqueduct fell steeply down Janiculum hill, the water powering a chain of flour mills.
The aqueduct continued to be used into the 20th century. But under Pope Paul V (1605-1621), the headwaters were dispensed with and the water supply came from Lake Bracciano instead.
The water from the aquifer under the Madonna of the Flower chapel was diverted to Bracciano, and today still supplies the town. The complex is now part of a pig farm whose owners use the old nympheum as a rubbish tip. Tree roots are pushing through the Egyptian blue decoration.
“The chapel and aqueduct are in danger of crumbling. They desperately need to be restored,” Ted O’Neill said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the