The Most Beautiful Aqueducts in the World

16 places in 9 countries · updated 13 October 2026

1. 01 Pont du Gard

   France · 19.8 km from Nîmes43.947° N 4.535° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   In the 1st century AD the Roman colony of Nemausus, today's Nîmes, needed water and found it at a spring near Uzès. The two towns are only about 20 km apart, but hills covered in dense garrigue lay between them, so the engineers took a winding route of some 50 km, mostly underground, with a total drop of just 17 metres. Where the channel had to cross the gorge of the Gardon, they built the Pont du Gard: three tiers of arches in golden shelly limestone, 49 metres high and about 275 metres long at the top, carrying a conduit roughly 1.8 metres high. The bridge itself falls only 2.5 cm along its length.

   Did you know? The bridge contains an estimated 50,400 tonnes of limestone, a volume of about 21,000 cubic metres.

   More about Pont du Gard →

2. 02 Aqueduct of Segovia

   Acueducto de Segovia

   Spain40.948° N 4.118° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The aqueduct does not stand at the edge of Segovia; it walks straight through it. At Plaza del Azoguejo its double tier of granite arches climbs to about 28.5 m above the street, and people pass beneath arches that have carried water, or at least the channel for it, since the Roman period. The whole elevated bridge runs for roughly 728 m and has 167 arches, and the blocks are laid entirely without mortar, held in place by their own weight and careful cutting. It is the emblem of the city and appears on its coat of arms.

   Did you know? According to legend, a water-carrier girl struck a pact with the devil, who built the aqueduct in one night but was beaten by dawn before laying the final stone.

   More about Aqueduct of Segovia →

3. 03 Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

   United Kingdom · 27.1 km from Chester52.970° N 3.088° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Thomas Telford did something no engineer had dared before: instead of a stone trough lined with clay — the only way anyone had carried a canal across a valley until then — he cast the whole watertight channel out of iron plates, 3.7 metres wide and 1.7 metres deep, and hung it 38 metres above the River Dee on eighteen hollow stone piers that taper toward the top to shed weight. He'd tested the idea on a smaller scale at Longdon-on-Tern first, then bet the Ellesmere Canal Company's money on it here. Sealing the iron joints was its own invention: the joints between the iron plates were packed with Welsh flannel soaked in a white-lead paste, then bolted tight — homely materials for a structure of such daring.

   Did you know? The mortar of the stone piers was mixed from lime, water and ox blood.

   More about Pontcysyllte Aqueduct →

4. 04 Águas Livres Aqueduct

   Aqueduto das Águas Livres

   Portugal · 1.7 km from Lisbon38.727° N 9.167° W

   

   Lisbon sits beside a great estuary, yet for centuries it went thirsty: the Tagus is too salty to drink and the old springs of Alfama could not supply a growing city. In 1731 King John V decreed an aqueduct to bring fresh water from springs near Belas, paid for by special taxes on wine, meat and olive oil. The Italian Antonio Canevari, the engineer Manuel da Maia and João Frederico Ludovice, architect of the palace at Mafra, drew up the first plans; Custódio Vieira took charge around 1736, and the Hungarian-born Carlos Mardel finished the work. Water began flowing in 1748, about three times what the city had had before.

   Did you know? Inside the Mãe d'Água reservoir, water pours from the mouth of a stone dolphin down a cascade into a tank 7.5 metres deep.

   More about Águas Livres Aqueduct →

5. 05 Magdeburg Canal Bridge

   Kanalbrücke Magdeburg

   Germany · 12.3 km from Magdeburg52.230° N 11.696° E

   

   The idea of joining the Mittellandkanal and the Elbe-Havel Canal directly over the Elbe River goes back to 1919, and by 1938 the anchor points and the Rothensee boat lift next to it were already built — then the Second World War stopped everything, and the divided, communist East German government afterward had no reason to finish a project designed to speed trade with the West. It sat half-built for roughly sixty years, a Cold War casualty nobody had the money or the incentive to complete.

   Did you know? At 918 metres, it is the longest canal bridge in Europe, with about 690 metres crossing the floodplain and 228 metres spanning the river itself.

   More about Magdeburg Canal Bridge →

6. 06 Les Ferreres Aqueduct

   Acueducto de les Ferreres

   Spain · 2.8 km from Tarragona41.146° N 1.244° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The Ferreres Aqueduct, better known locally as the Pont del Diable, the Devil's Bridge, is the most spectacular surviving piece of the water supply that fed Roman Tarraco, the capital of the province of Hispania Tarraconensis and today's Tarragona. It carried water taken from the Francolí river about 15 km north of the city, and it probably dates from the reign of Augustus. Along with the rest of Tarraco's Roman remains, it is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Archaeological Ensemble of Tarraco, inscribed in 2000.

   Did you know? According to legend, the devil built the bridge in exchange for the soul of the first to drink its water, and a donkey was made to drink first.

   More about Les Ferreres Aqueduct →

7. 07 Aqua Claudia

   Acquedotto Claudio

   Italy · 8.1 km from Rome41.849° N 12.554° E

   

   The emperor Caligula began the Aqua Claudia in 38 AD and his successor Claudius, whose name it carries, inaugurated it in 52 AD. It was the eighth aqueduct to feed Rome and one of the four the ancients counted as great: its channel ran for about 69 kilometres from the Caeruleus and Curtius springs in the upper Aniene valley, near the 38th milestone of the road to Subiaco, and delivered on the order of 185,000 cubic metres of water a day. For most of its course it travelled underground, but on the last stretch across the flat Campagna it had to be lifted onto arches to keep its gradient as it approached the city — and those arches are what survive.

   Did you know? Tacitus suggests the aqueduct was already carrying water by AD 47, five years before its official completion.

   More about Aqua Claudia →

8. 08 Aqueduct of Valens

   Bozdoğan Kemeri

   Turkey · 1.6 km from Istanbul41.016° N 28.956° E

   

   The Aqueduct of Valens is the most striking piece of Roman engineering still standing in the middle of Istanbul. Its long double tier of stone and brick arches, known in Turkish as the Bozdoğan Kemeri, strides across the dip between two of the city's hills, the ones now crowned by Istanbul University and the Fatih Mosque, and the traffic of Atatürk Boulevard passes beneath it. The surviving stretch is about 921 metres long and up to about 29 metres high.

   Did you know? In the fourth century Gregory of Nazianzus described the system as a river that ran both beneath the ground and through the air.

   More about Aqueduct of Valens →

9. 09 Caroline Aqueduct (Aqueduct of Vanvitelli)

   Acquedotto Carolino

   Italy · 5.4 km from Caserta41.059° N 14.402° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The Aqueduct of Vanvitelli, known in Italy as the Acquedotto Carolino, was built to bring water to the Bourbon palace at Caserta, and its showpiece is a bridge of tufa that strides across the Valle di Maddaloni on three tiers of arches. The crossing between Monte Longano and Monte Garzano runs for 529 metres on 44 square piers and rises 55.8 metres at its highest point. It was modelled on the aqueducts of ancient Rome, and when it was finished it was the longest bridge in Europe.

   Did you know? In 1754 King Charles raised Airola to the rank of city as formal compensation for tapping the springs on its land.

   More about Caroline Aqueduct (Aqueduct of Vanvitelli) →

10. 10 Acueducto de los Milagros

    Spain · 1.6 km from Mérida38.924° N 6.348° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On the northwest side of Mérida, a line of tall pillars striped in grey granite and red brick crosses the valley of the little Albarregas River, carrying nothing now but arches and sky. This is what remains of one of the aqueducts of Emerita Augusta, founded under Augustus as capital of the Roman province of Lusitania. The standing stretch runs for about 830 metres and reaches 25 metres at its highest point, and it was the local people of later centuries, awed by its size, who named it the Aqueduct of the Miracles.

    Did you know? Mérida was supplied by three Roman aqueducts; besides Los Milagros there were the 15-kilometre Aqua Augusta from the Cornalvo reservoir and the San Lázaro aqueduct.

    More about Acueducto de los Milagros →

11. 11 Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque

    Acueducto del Padre Tembleque

    Mexico · 30.9 km from Pachuca19.836° N 98.662° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On the dry plateau north-east of Mexico City, a line of tall arches striding across the Papalote ravine near the village of Santiago Tepeyahualco is the visible crown of the most important hydraulic work of sixteenth-century New Spain. The Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque carried spring water from the slopes of the Tecajete volcano to the Indigenous towns of Otumba and Zempoala and the villages along the way. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 as the Hydraulic System of the Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque.

    Did you know? UNESCO describes the main arcade as the highest single-level arcade ever built in an aqueduct from Roman times to the mid-16th century.

    More about Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque →

12. 12 Briare aqueduct

    Pont-canal de Briare

    France47.632° N 2.737° E

    

    At Briare a canal sails across the Loire. Boats travelling between the Loire valley and the Seine cross the river in a steel trough of water more than 660 metres long, lined on both sides by towpaths and a row of ornate lamp standards, with the river flowing freely far beneath through fifteen wide spans. From its opening in 1896 until the Magdeburg Water Bridge was completed in 2003, it was the longest steel navigable aqueduct in the world.

    Did you know? The trough is carried over fifteen spans of about 37 metres each, resting on stone piers three metres thick.

    More about Briare aqueduct →

13. 13 Pont d'Aël

    Ponte acquedotto di Pont d'Aël

    Italy · 9.9 km from Aosta45.677° N 7.222° E

    

    Pont d'Aël is a Roman bridge-aqueduct thrown across the gorge of the Grand Eyvia torrent at the mouth of the Cogne valley, and it is remarkable for how much of it still stands two thousand years later. A single stone arch of just over 14 metres carries a narrow structure 60 metres long and only 2.26 metres wide, some 22 metres tall, perched about 66 metres above the bed of a ravine that elsewhere deepens to 150 metres. The tiny hamlet of Pont d'Aël clusters at its end.

    Did you know? The single arch spans just over 14 metres across a cleft that is only about 12 metres wide but 66 metres deep.

    More about Pont d'Aël →

14. 14 Ponte delle Torri

    Italy42.733° N 12.744° E

    

    A wall of stone some 80 metres high and 230 metres long closes the gorge of the Tessino just below Spoleto, carried on nine tall, slender arches whose piers rise straight from the ravine floor. The bridge links the hill of the old town, crowned by the Rocca Albornoziana, with the wooded slopes of Monteluco opposite, and from either end it reads not as a bridge at all but as a single sheer screen of masonry hanging between two mountains.

    Did you know? J. M. W. Turner passed through Spoleto in 1819 and later painted The Ponte delle Torri, Spoleto, an oil now in the Tate's Turner Bequest.

    More about Ponte delle Torri →

15. 15 G-Cans Flood Channel

    Japan · 34.9 km from Tokyo35.998° N 139.812° E

    

    Fifty metres beneath the rice fields and suburbs of Kasukabe, north of Tokyo, lies a room that people compare to a temple. Its official name is the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel; engineers and fans know it as G-Cans. It was built for one purpose: to take floodwater that the small rivers of the low-lying plain, the Nakagawa, the Kuramatsu and the Ōotoshi-Furutone, cannot hold and send it underground to the far larger Edogawa River. Construction began in the early 1990s, the first section went into partial operation in 2002, and the full system was finished in 2006.

    Did you know? It is considered the largest underground floodwater diversion facility in the world.

    More about G-Cans Flood Channel →

16. 16 Tsūjun Bridge

    Japan · 30.5 km from Kumamoto32.682° N 130.994° E

    

    A stone arch spans a wooded gorge in central Kyushu, and every so often jets of water burst from its sides and fall in white plumes into the river below. Tsūjun Bridge is not a road bridge but an aqueduct, built in 1854 to carry water across the valley to the Shiraito Plateau in what is now the town of Yamato, Kumamoto Prefecture. The plateau, formed of volcanic ash from Mount Aso, swallowed rainwater so quickly that its farmers had almost no water for rice. In 2023 the bridge became the first civil-engineering structure in Japan to be designated a National Treasure.

    Did you know? Water drops about 7.5 metres into the pipes on the upstream side and climbs about 5.8 metres on the far side, a net fall of only 1.7 metres.

    More about Tsūjun Bridge →