The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Aqueducts in Europe
6 places in 4 countries · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed aqueducts in Europe are Pont du Gard (France), Aqueduct of Segovia (Spain) and Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (United Kingdom). The list covers 6 UNESCO-listed aqueducts in 4 countries. Spain has the most, with 3. Last updated 6 October 2026.
An aqueduct is engineering made visible: to keep water flowing at a gentle, steady gradient across valleys, builders had to raise channels on arches tall enough to carry them level over rivers and ravines. Rome built them for its provincial cities from Gaul to Spain, and later eras revived the idea for palaces and canals. The UNESCO-listed ones here are those where the structure survives as the centrepiece of a wider heritage, a Roman city, a royal palace or an industrial landscape.
The Pont du Gard, carrying water to Roman Nîmes on three tiers of arches over the Gardon, is the tallest surviving Roman aqueduct bridge. The Aqueduct of Segovia strides through the centre of the city on granite blocks laid without mortar, and in Mérida the Acueducto de los Milagros, its piers banded in granite and brick, once supplied Roman Emerita Augusta. Les Ferreres Aqueduct near Tarragona, known as the Devil's Bridge, is a two-tiered relic of Roman Tarraco. The 18th century added the Caroline Aqueduct, built by Luigi Vanvitelli to feed the fountains of the Royal Palace of Caserta, with its three-tiered bridge across the Maddaloni valley. In Wales, Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, completed in 1805, carries a canal in a cast-iron trough high above the River Dee.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pont du Gard | Aqueduct | France | ✓ |
| 2 | Aqueduct of Segovia | Aqueduct | Spain | ✓ |
| 3 | Pontcysyllte Aqueduct | Aqueduct | United Kingdom | ✓ |
| 4 | Les Ferreres Aqueduct | Aqueduct | Spain | ✓ |
| 5 | Caroline Aqueduct (Aqueduct of Vanvitelli) | Aqueduct | Italy | ✓ |
| 6 | Acueducto de los Milagros | Aqueduct | Spain | ✓ |
01 Pont du Gard
France · 19.8 km from Nîmes43.947° N 4.535° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Sloopng from Pixabay 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. 8 metres high. 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.
02 Aqueduct of Segovia
Acueducto de Segovia
Spain40.948° N 4.118° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0 The aqueduct does not stand at the edge of Segovia; it walks straight through it. 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.
Did you know? The aqueduct was declared a national monument of Spain in 1884, a century before its UNESCO listing.
03 Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
United Kingdom · 27.1 km from Chester52.970° N 3.088° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Adrian Pingstone · Public domain 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.
Did you know? The mortar of the stone piers was mixed from lime, water and ox blood.
04 Les Ferreres Aqueduct
Acueducto de les Ferreres
Spain · 2.8 km from Tarragona41.146° N 1.244° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Carole Raddato · CC BY-SA 2.0 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.
Did you know? The aqueduct was declared a national historic-artistic monument in 1905, long before its World Heritage listing.
05 Caroline Aqueduct (Aqueduct of Vanvitelli)
Acquedotto Carolino
Italy · 5.4 km from Caserta41.059° N 14.402° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
F. Patturelli · Public domain 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. 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.
06 Acueducto de los Milagros
Spain · 1.6 km from Mérida38.924° N 6.348° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
doalex · CC BY-SA 3.0 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.
Did you know? The aqueduct was declared a Spanish national monument on 13 December 1912, more than eighty years before its UNESCO listing.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful UNESCO-listed aqueducts in Europe?
- On our list, Pont du Gard (France) ranks first, followed by Aqueduct of Segovia (Spain) and Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (United Kingdom).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed aqueducts in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Spain (3), France (1) and Italy (1).
- How was the Aqueduct of Segovia built without mortar?
- Its granite blocks were cut precisely and held in place by their own weight and the balance of the arches, so no mortar was needed.
- Can boats still cross the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct?
- Yes. Narrowboats on the Llangollen Canal still cross it in its cast-iron trough; it is the highest canal aqueduct in the world and the longest in Great Britain.
- Why is the aqueduct in Mérida called the Aqueduct of the Miracles?
- The name Los Milagros was given by local people who marvelled that its tall, slender piers had survived standing for so many centuries.
- How many UNESCO-listed aqueducts are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 6 UNESCO-listed aqueducts in 4 countries. Spain has the most, with 3.