Fountains of Papal RomeMacVeagh, Fanny Davenport Rogers
History
Fountains of Papal Rome
MacVeagh, Fanny Davenport Rogers
Fountains -- Italy -- Rome
its Roman fountains exactly as it comes from its springs on the Via
Collatina. This aqueduct was cut off from the city in 537 by the Goths
and Burgundians, and, though in the same year Belisarius restored the
aqueducts of Claudius and Trajan, the Virgo seems to have remained
entirely unused for the next two hundred years. During that period the
popes were not sufficiently powerful to undertake any great public
works, but when Charlemagne visited Rome in 778 he gave the needed
support to the head of the church, and thereafter the popes began the
restoration and the maintenance of the Roman aqueducts. The Virgo was
restored in 1447 by Nicholas V, in whose pontificate Constantinople was
taken by the Turks and the Wars of the Roses began in England. He was
a great Pope and repaired the aqueduct so thoroughly that it remained
in use for thirty years. There must always have been a main fountain
for the Virgo Water, but the records of the modern “Fountain of Trevi”
begins with the fountain which Vasari says was rebuilt by Nicholas V’s
architect, Leon Batista Alberti. After a short period the aqueduct was
again restored and the fountain enlarged by “The Great Builder,” Sixtus
IV. Then occurs a period of various vicissitudes, and finally, in 1570,
Pius V restored the Virgo Aqueduct effectively and rebuilt Sixtus IV’s
fountain, making what is now known as the “old Trevi fountain.” This
fountain stood not where the present one stands, but to the west of
it, in the little Piazza Santa Crocifere. The old engravings show it
to have been a huge semicircular pool into which the water poured from
three great apertures made in massive stone piers.
[Illustration: Figure of “Neptune” in the Fountain of Trevi.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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