Aqua Claudia

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.

The finest run stands in the Parco degli Acquedotti, a 240-hectare stretch of open grassland on Rome's south-eastern edge that is part of the Appia Antica regional park. Here the arcade marches across the meadows in great squared stone blocks, laid in the dry ashlar technique the Romans called opus quadratum, and near the crossing of Via Lemonia the piers carry the channel almost 28 metres above the ground. Look at the arches closely and you can read the aqueduct's long working life: patches of brick and mixed masonry are the repairs of later emperors, from Vespasian and Titus to Hadrian, and the system was still being mended in the time of Belisarius in the 6th century and Pope Hadrian I in the 8th.

The Claudia also shaped the city it served. On top of its channel ran a second one, that of the Anio Novus, and near the city both were carried on a monumental double arch of travertine, today's Porta Maggiore, whose inscriptions still name Claudius and the later restorers Vespasian and Titus. Nero branched off it with the Arcus Neroniani to carry water to the Caelian hill, Domitian extended the supply to the imperial palaces on the Palatine, and where the two channels crossed the Via Praenestina and Via Labicana, Aurelian later folded the arch into his city wall in 271. In the park the Acqua Felice, built for Pope Sixtus V in the 1580s, runs along one side, so Roman and papal waterworks fifteen centuries apart can be seen together.

The meadow setting is what makes the place unforgettable: sheep, joggers and umbrella pines against a ruined arcade striding towards the Alban Hills. Film-makers have long been drawn to it — Fellini opened La Dolce Vita with a statue of Christ carried by helicopter along the line of the Aqua Claudia, and Pasolini's Mamma Roma and Sorrentino's The Great Beauty also used the park. Come at the end of the day, when the arches throw long shadows across the grass. The remains of the Villa delle Vignacce and a short stretch of the paved Roman Via Latina lie within the same park.

Getting there

The park lies inside Rome's city limits, in the south-eastern districts; the nearest airport is Rome Ciampino (CIA), about 6.5 km away. The simplest approach is by Metro Line A to Giulio Agricola, from where Via Lemonia leads into the park beside the tallest arches. Entry to the park is free, and the ground is flat and easy for walking or cycling.