The Triumph of Water
The fountain designed by architect Luigi Vanvittelli, an illustrious exponent of Italian Neoclassicism, celebrates the retun of water to the port of Civitavecchia. The first aqueduct built for Centumcelle on the occasion of the construction of the port by Apollodorus of Damascus also included the construction of an aqueduct, which supplied the city from the springs of the Tolfa mountains. At the end of the seventeenth century, Pope Innocent XII managed to reactivate the old aqueduct of Trajan.
With a suggestive walk that from Michelangelo's fort reaches the walls you can admire the faun, the protagonist of the fountain fed by the aqueduct of Trajan.
The ancient aqueduct collected water from two springs located 300 meters above sea level, on the slopes of the Allumiere mountains. At the end of its long jouney, the water, near Vigna De Filippi, flowed into the Castellum, which was located in a position high enough to supply the center of Centumcellae and the port under construction. With the decay of Centumcellae, and the subsequent abandonment, the aqueduct stopped collecting and carrying water. The work to restore the aqueduct was demanding. The pipes had to be almost completely redone and much of the wall structures were reduced to a very poor state of repair. What was supposed to be a recovery project became a work as imposing as the one commissioned by the Roman emperor. It took ten years to complete the work and the arrival of a new pontiff, Clement XI, thanks to whom the water from the Tolfa mountains finally reached the city again. Finally, to seal the work, Pope Benedict XIV, in 1740, wanted to replace an old basin with the fountain that we can admire today.
