Aqua Claudia

The history of aqueducts in Ancient Rome is very interesting. Mostly because they were built so long ago without many of the materials we use today. The Aqua Claudia’s impact proves aqueduct's true greatness. Although the Aqua Claudia was poorly built so it broke down very easily. however, the Great Hadrian took time just to help fix this aqueduct, emphasizing its importance. 
The history of aqueducts, namely, the Aqua Claudia is very interesting. The start of the aqueducts was in 38 A.D., in Rome. Shortly after The Aqua Claudia was built, Nero built a branch to it. The branch's name was Arcus Neroniani.
        The Aqua Claudia had a huge impact on Rome. It took fourteen years to build. The Aqua Claudia was finished in A.D. 52 by Claudius himself. Aqua Claudia got its water from the Albudinus spring. Before construction everyone practiced using the aqueduct beforehand, so everyone that everyone was familiar on how it was supposed to function. Caligula made people build this amazing structure mostly because the other aqueducts were very busy. The Aqua Claudia seems to be one of the most impressive and unique aqueducts. There were also many repairs to this aqueduct due to it having many faults. For example, Nero built Arcus Neroniani which was one of Aqua Claudia's branches as mentioned before. The Aqua Claudia was 69 km long (43 miles) and delivered 48871.83 gallons per day. The Aqua Claudia suppliesd 20% of Rome's water! Romans thought that the aqueduct would break after 8 years due to the low cost to build the Aqua Claudia. The exact cost of this aqueduct is not known, but paintings show that it was cheap.
        The architecture of the Aqua Claudia is very unique. the start of the aqueduct or the source is in the Anio Valley. The water springs were Caerules and Curtius. Caerules and Curtius were the only two springs at first, but they were taken over by the Albudinus spring. The Aqua Claudia went along the banks of Anio underground. It then went up the Marcia. The Aqua Claudia used to be on the left bank of Anio, over Vicovaro, but is now on the right side. Then the Aqua Claudia emerges from the ground, right near the Capannelle. It then soon crosses the Romavecchia. It then enters Rome near the Spes Vetus. The Aqua Claudia then crossed Via Prenestina and Labicana on Porta Maggiore. There were also many repairs. Vespasian and Titus fixed the up aqueduct. Hadrian also rebuilt the Aqua Claudia. There is some proof that Hadrian rebuilt the Aqua Claudia. Proof that Hadrian rebuilt the Aqua Claudia was that there were some old brick stamps that were found in Rome. The bad material and horrible construction tells us why Aqua Claudia broke. however, this does not tell us why the repairs took so long. in 62 AD some key events happened that could be clues of how and or why the Aqua Claudia broke down and took so long to rebuild. First there was a big earthquake, which was in southern Italy, on the same date of 5th February 62 A.D. The storm also caused lots of damage to lots of towns, and 200 ships got destroyed in the same year by a tsunami and 100 more ships get destroyed by a fire upstream near the source of the aqueduct. Another storm destroyed corn, which led to shortage of food. This might explain why it took so long to rebuild.
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