Italian Water Fountains: The Roman Fascination

Water features are strongly associated to the Roman history in particular because water had a solid religious worth. This was not rare in the societies of the times as the early Greek scholars also sited much trust in water and water springs were improved into shrines to heroes and nymphs as well as their gods and goddesses. The Greeks understood that the capacity for a community to live comes from a sustainable source of good water and so the places where their water sprung from were heralded as a blessing. They also had the means to transport this wholesome water to other sites of interest via irrigation or aqueducts. The Greeks had written many fountains in their historical books, such as The Spring of Pirene at Corinth, which contained of many springs coming out of a white stone mural to Pegasus, with a basin at the bottom. In the same city, there was another fountain shrine to Neptune, which included a dolphin with water flowing from its mouth.

Still today it is straight forward to identify how these first works have stimulated later and even modern fountains. The Romans were very engaged with these soothing fountains and realised the significance and importance of the aqueducts too. They made this kind of fountains their own by means of their own religious and idolised icons to decorate the fountains, as well as using the technology of the time to ensure the availability of fresh natural spring water to all areas of their empire.

Still today, Italy bears the scars of these aqueducts by the side of the area between Campagna to the capital, Rome. This was one of the major significant turning points in Roman history, as the rejuvenation of their capital, with a fresh supply of water was celebrated with a wonderful set of public fountains, where the plebarians could fetch fresh water from. Of course, there were wealthy and significant members of Roman culture who were able to rent their own private water source and hand made their own fountains to party. Examples of private fountains are spraying a great water jet to a lower basin.

Even today, guests to Rome, stumble upon the fountains to be a powerful and awe inspiring scenery, particularly the Trevi Fountain, which signified the conclusion of an aqueduct, built in 19BC, getting water from the Salone Springs, nearly 20 kilometres from Rome. There is a myth linked to this particular fountain, that if you turn your back to the fountain and throw in a coin and it splashes in the water, you will come back to Rome but if not, you will not. This it seems has survived from the era when soldiers would make an offering to their gods before going on a journey into war, which just illustrates how the religious significance of the Roman fountains has not at all been lost in time.