The Aqua Claudia was begun under the the reign of the emperor Caligula (12-41 CE) and completed under that of the emperor Claudius (10 BCE-54 CE) in 52 CE. The Goths cut the aqueducts in 537 CE, ending the presence of aqueduct water in Rome. As Howard Hibbard remarked, without water Rome had “shrunken like a nut within the shell of her ancient walls” (5). Here, Piranesi captures the remains of the Aqua Claudia, where it descends from the Caelian Hill towards the Palatine Hill, identified in the key (C). Two staffage figures occupy the center of the image, pointing at the aqueduct and providing scale. The ruins are populated with vegetation that grows out of and on top of the masonry’s crevices; indeed, the staffage figures mimic tree roots, seeming to grow out of the landscape. With the light source coming from the left, the giant masonry piers of the aqueduct cast dramatic shadows, as light pierces through the arched openings. Piranesi’s caption identifies and explains the ruined aqueduct: “A. Pilastro angolare dell’arcuazione provegnente dal Celio come dimostra il di lei avanzo B.”  

Piranesi frequently cites De Aquis Urbis Romae, one of the earliest accounts of the Roman aqueduct system’s functioning, by Sextus Julius Frontinus (c. 40-103 CE). Since the text’s rediscovery in manuscript form in the sixteenth century, De Aquis Urbis was often published in tandem with Vitruvius’s De Architectura, which was also rediscovered by Renaissance humanists. Piranesi certainly would have owned a copy (if not several) of Frontinus and Vitruvius’s texts. Knowledge acquired by reading about the aqueducts was supplemented with careful study of the physical remains, like the ones pictured here. Reading and annotating such texts would have been a crucial step in Piranesi’s efforts to map, understand, and reconstruct Rome’s aqueduct system. (SAH)