Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:16:05.394Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Water-supply infrastructure of Byzantine Constantinople

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2017

Kate Ward
Affiliation:
Institute of Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering, Kate.Ward@ed.ac.uk
James Crow
Affiliation:
School of History, Classics & Archaeology, (both) Univ of Edinburgh, jim.crow@ed.ac.uk
Martin Crapper
Affiliation:
Dept. of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Northumbria University, martin.crapper@northumbria.ac.uk

Extract

Modern water-supply systems — hidden beneath the ground, constructed, expanded, adapted and repaired intermittently by multiple groups of people — are often messy and difficult to comprehend. The ancient water-supply system we consider here is no different — and perhaps even more complex as it was developed over 1200 years and then had a modern city built on top. Despite this, we are beginning to understand how one of the Roman world's most important cities provided its population with water.

The remains of water infrastructure in Constantinople attest to a complex system of water-management and distribution, one that developed from the colony of Byzantium, through the growth and eventual decline of the new capital of the Roman empire, until conquest by the Ottomans. Aqueducts — the system of channels, bridges and tunnels designed to carry water through the landscape — were the focus of infrastructure investment in earlier periods, but cisterns for the storage and distribution of water were constructed throughout the time of Byzantine Constantinople.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of Roman Archaeology L.L.C. 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)