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For more than two thousand years fountains have provided drinking water and decorated the piazzas of Rome. During the Roman Empire, in 98 AD, according to Sextus Julius Frontinus, the Roman consul who was named curator aquarum or guardian of the water of the city, Rome had nine aqueducts which fed 39 monumental fountains and 591 public basins, not counting the water supplied to the Imperial ...
Léon Bonnat, Roman Girl drinking at a Fountain (1875) The city of Rome began installing nasoni in the 1870s to provide a water supply for citizens. The exact year is not known: sources note both 1872 [5] and 1874 [6] as the first time a nasone was installed. The fountains' design went unchanged for decades.
At the beginning the reign of Pope Sixtus V (born Felice Peretti) in 1585, only one of the ancient Roman aqueducts which brought water to the city, the Aqua Vergine, was still being maintained and working. Everyone in Rome who wanted clean drinking water had to go to the single fountain near the site of today's Trevi Fountain.
The source of water for the fountain, the Aqua Paola, was on the Janiculum hill, 266 above sea level, which meant that the fountain could shoot water twenty feet upwards into the air. [3] In 1641, the Flemish lawyer Theodor Ameyden said that the jet of water from the top of the fountain "seemed to rise in the air like a veritable river."
Today, as in days of old, the Acqua Vergine is regarded as furnishing some of the purest drinking-water in Rome, reputed for its restorative qualities. Many people to this day can be seen filling containers for drinking and cooking in its splendid fountains, including:
Fontana dell'Acqua Paola (detail) The Fontana dell'Acqua Paola was inspired by the popularity of the Fontana dell'Acqua Felice, built in 1585–1588 by Pope Sixtus V.Pope Paul V decided to rebuild and extend the ruined Acqua Traiana aqueduct built by the Emperor Trajan in order to create a source of clean drinking water for the residents of the Janiculum Hill, who were forced to take their ...