page_title: Tunnels of Claudius
section_title: New hydraulic works
hierarchical_section_title: Tunnels of Claudius / History / New hydraulic works
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Cunicolo del Ferraro e pozzo 23 in un disegno di Raffaele Fabretti del 1683
context_page_description: The Tunnels of Claudius are a hydraulic work made up of a long underground canal, six inclined service tunnels and thirty-two wells, which Emperor Claudius had built between 41 and 52 AD to control the variable levels of the Fucine Lake in Abruzzo, thus protecting riparian villages from floods and reclaiming the Fucine lands making them cultivable. Thanks to them, the lake waters flowed out through the belly of Mount Salviano from the Avezzano side along the almost 6-kilometre-long tunnel until they flowed into the Liri River on the opposite side of the mountain, under the old town of Capistrello. The underground canal represents the longest tunnel ever built since ancient times until the inauguration of the Fréjus Rail Tunnel occurring in 1871.
  With the fall the Roman Empire, and during the Barbarian invasions, the main canal, not maintained anymore, became definitively clogged. Centuries later, starting from 1854, Alessandro Torlonia built the new canal, more than 6 kilometres long, mostly following Claudius' immissary and emissary.
context_section_description: From 1826, about 18 centuries after the first Claudian drainage, new attempts to partially recover the function of the emissary were carried out by Cavaliere Luigi Giura and Commendatore Carlo Afan de Rivera.
  Afan de Rivera was given the task by King Francis I of providing for the new restoration plan of the emissary of Claudius. But it was with the intervention of Roman banker Alessandro Torlonia that on 10 July 1854 the Claudian plan was resumed with the technical assistance of Swiss engineer Franz Mayor de Montricher. The work was concluded in 1870 by two engineers, Swiss site engineer Enrico Samuele Bermont and French deputy site engineer Alessandro Brisse, assisted by agent Léon De Rotrou. In 1873 the gradual drainage of the Fucine Lake began, while the reclamation operations of the territory were brought to an end between 1875 and 1876.
  Thus, following considerable economic efforts the Abruzzese lake was completely and definitively drained, which was the third in Italy as to the extent with about 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres). Workers and technicians, among the best and most qualified of the time, were employed for decades, who restored the original emissary enlarging its section. The waters of the Fucine flowed out slowly into the Liri River from the exit of the tunnel under the old town of Capistrello. Other canals and wells were added to the old tunnels and those from the Roman age were enlarged. The purpose of the rock-carved tunnels with an inclined course was that of allowing air to arrive into the Mount Salviano tunnel and workers, means and dug materials to pass through.
  On 1 October 1878 the lake was officially declared drained. Thus the Fucine plain, having been reclaimed and quickly supplied with several facilities, became a fertile land, ideal for farming productions, especially cereals, vegetables and sugar beets, the latter being processed in the Avezzano sugar mill. And so it was that Fucine fishers became farmers.
  A second emissary was made built by the Torlonia in the first half of the 20th century, with the purpose of compensating for the functions of the main tunnels in case of extraordinary repairs. It starts from the intersection point of the Roman emissary with the outer drainage next to one of the water storage basins of the Incile del Fucino southwards, ending up in Canistro next to one of the hydroelectric power plants built by the Torlonia with the aim of generating power for the operation of the Avezzano paper and sugar mill.
caption: Blacksmith Tunnel and well no. 23 in a drawing of 1683 by Raffaele Fabretti
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