Aspendos Aqueduct

The water conduit that supplied Aspendos with water from the Taurus mountains nineteen kilometres away — one of the best-preserved examples of Roman engineering in Asia Minor. It was built in the second century AD at the expense of a townsman, Tiberius Claudius Italicus, as a dedicatory inscription recorded. For the main part of its course the water ran along a closed channel, but it crossed the valley in front of the city on arcades with two header towers: in them the flow rose and dropped again, damping speed and pressure — a device known as an inverted siphon. The northern tower stands almost at its full height, about forty metres, and beside it you can see clearly how the masonry is put together: dressed limestone on the outside, a rubble core within. The arcades run across the field for hundreds of metres, goats graze between the piers, and you can walk right up to them — there are no fences. Some of the arches collapsed in earthquakes, but the overall line of the conduit can be traced all the way to the foothills.

On the map