Drinking Water Sanitation and Regulation in Rome

Author: Olivia Reimler

September 20, 2024

All photos taken by author, unless noted otherwise

Introduction

Clean and safe drinking water is arguably one of the most important resources on this planet. Clean drinking water is still a hot commodity today all around the world. According to WHO, 2019, about 2.2 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water today. That is about one-fourth of the global population. So if access to safe drinking water is still an issue today, how did the Ancient Romans manage their drinking water supply?

Water has been a focal point throughout the history of Rome. Ancient Roman water infrastructure was ahead of its time with the long spans of aqueducts and indoor plumbing systems. These systems allowed clean water to be brought into Rome and dirty water out. Today this may not seem like a big deal, but back then, it was a great feat of engineering.

While walking around Rome, I was fascinated by all of the nasoni (seen below in figure 1), the large fountains, the ruins of public baths, and the aqueduct parks I have visited. I am so impressed at the engineering that went into creating these systems, but I also have so many questions. I wondered; has the drinking water brought to Rome always been clean? I also wondered; how have the standards for drinking water changed throughout Rome’s history?

I will be exploring the drinking water treatment systems and regulations throughout the history of Rome. I will look at the differences and similarities between Ancient Rome and Modern Rome. I am defining ancient Rome as the time period between the founding of Rome in 753 BC and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. I am defining modern Rome as developments made in the last 200 or so years. For these periods I will be looking at the methods used to produce clean drinking water as well as the regulations in place for the quality of the water.

Ancient Rome

Ancient Water Treatment Systems

Aqueducts

The very first sources of water for Romans were the Tiber River and other local springs, but with the growing population these sources became polluted and inadequate (Hansen, 1983). The need for more clean water for Romans led to the construction of the first aqueduct to bring stream water directly to Rome. Appius Claudius had the first Roman aqueduct constructed in 312 B.C. and it is called the Aqua Appia. Over the course of the next 500 or so years, ten more aqueducts would be built to bring fresh, clean water into Rome (CEE409 Water Lecture, 2024). The quality of the water greatly depended on the source of the aqueduct since the Ancient Romans did not use any chemicals to treat the water. The majority of the aqueducts got their water from springs or streams which had good quality water like the Aqua Tepula seen in figure 2, but the aqueducts that used a lake or a river, like the Aqua Anio Vetus, had poorer water quality (CEE409 Water Lecture, 2024).

These aqueducts did not only transport water to Rome, but they also helped to filtered the water. The pipes were built with stone discs which had holes though them to filter out large debris, like branches or leaves (Tour of Parco Degli Acquedotti given by Adriano, 2024). This was the Ancient Roman version of a typical screening process that is done before primary treatment of drinking water. There were also castellum towards the ends of the aqueducts used to store and filter the water. They were basically settling tanks that filtered debris out of the water before the water was pumped to a fountain, bath, or private building (Dembskey, 2009). This was particularly interesting to me because prior to coming to Rome, I had no idea how complex these aqueducts actually were. I thought they just took water from the source to the city, but they were doing much more. There was also aeration going on throughout this whole process. The water was constantly flowing through the pipes and into fountains so, as a result, the water was never still enough to start growing bacteria.

According to Vitruvius, water could be transported using three different materials; masonry, lead pipes, or terracotta pipes. Although those were the main three materials for conducting water, wood has also been found to be used in Roman aqueducts (Dembskey, 2009). An example of a terracotta pipe can be seen in figure 4 above and a lead pipe can be seen in figure 5 above and in figure 6 below. There is a lot of debate between historians on weather or not the lead pipes used in Ancient Roman aqueducts caused lead poisoning. Even then, lead was known to be toxic so terracotta pipes were chosen more often. Vitruvius states in his article “Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system… This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; … water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome.” (VIII.6.10-11). While the Romans knew that lead pipes were harmful to their bodies, they were still used. According to Hays, “Romans had 10 more times lead in their bones than modern Americans”. Even though lead pipes were used throughout the city and speculated as an issue, the lead pipes may not have been the leading cause of lead poisoning in Ancient Rome. Since the water coming into the aqueducts from the streams were so mineral rich, they deposited a residue in the lead pipes which made them “safer” to use (Tour of Parco Degli Acquedotti given by Adriano, 2024). No one can be sure exactly what the Romans drank but the lead poisoning issues could have come from the lead pots they used to boil grape juice, and not the aqueduct pipes (University of Chicago, 2024). All in all, the water that the Romans drank most likely had small amounts of lead, but they were mostly protected from lead poisoning from the mineral build-up in the pipes.

As far as water born diseases go, there does not seem to be any issues with that after the Romans stopped getting their water from the Tiber River and started using the springs and streams farther from the city. I believe that the groundwater 2000 years ago was much cleaner than groundwater today, so the water the Romans were pulling from the springs and streams were already fairly clean.

Regulations

In ancient Rome, water was used to display power and wealth. Rulers and other wealthy people built magnificent structures involving water. They built monuments to display wealth and fountains to allow people to come and get drinking water. But who was regulating the quality of water in Ancient Rome, if anyone? In Ancient Rome there was no differentiation between potable water and non potable water, since they used the water from the aqueducts for anything they needed fresh water for. There is no evidence of the quality of the water being regulated by the government, only the access to the water was regulated. Vitruvius’ writings were the first to mention drinking water quality and the dangers of lead pipes, as I mentioned above. Since the Ancient Romans did not have any tools to test water quality, they had to rely on what the water looked, smelled, and tasted like.

Transition Period: A Brief History and Restoration

During the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the aqueducts were knocked down by enemies or neglected (Tour of Parco Degli Acquedotti given by Adriano, 2024). Since most of them were broken, there was only one aqueduct left that supplied fresh water to Rome, the Aqua Virgo (Karmon, 2005). The population of Rome during the peak of the Roman Empire was about 1 million people and it did not start to significantly rise until about the 1800s (Mandich, 2016). Since Rome’s population was so small during this transition period, there was not a need for such a large quantity of water. The Aqua Virgo fed into what is now the Trevi Fountain and provided fresh drinking water to the people who lived near there (Karmon, 2005).

After the majority of the aqueducts were destroyed or abandoned, there was a lot of effort to try and restore them and bring more clean water back to Rome because without them the closest source is the Tiber River shown below in figure 7. In the 600’s and 700’s Pope Gregory I and Pope Hadrian I restored Aqua Virgo. It was still providing water for hundreds of years after that until in 1453, Pope Nicholas V renovated Aqua Virgo, and renamed it Aqua Vergine. This was the only functioning aqueduct of the original eleven that fed into Rome (Emmy 2017).

Modern Rome

New Drinking Fountains!

The iconic Italian drinking fountains called nasoni (see figure 8 below) are what initially got me interested in this topic so I can not go on without a brief history of how they came to be. Of course there were already public fountains in Ancient Rome, but they were larger fountains meant to collect water from for all purposes, not just drinking. In the 1870’s, mayor Luigi Pianciani and councilor Rinazzi had thousands of nasoni installed to give the public free drinking water (ROMA Sito Turistico Ufficiale, n.d.). They typically have a larger spout pouring water down and if you cover the large spout, water will spray up, through a smaller hole so you can drink right from it. These can be seen all over Rome and even Italy. They are especially prominent in the city center, there are three nasoni right outside the UW Rome center!

Modern Treatment Systems

Water Source and Treatment

Today Rome gets it’s water from a mix of sources. About two thirds of the water Rome uses comes from Peschiera springs at the base of Mount Nuria. The rest of the sources are smaller streams, and Lake Bracciano serves as an emergeny reserve in case of a drought, which happened in 2023 (Di Donfrancesco, 2023). Unlike in Ancient Rome, the quality of the water depends much less on the source of the water.

Modern Regulations

Who Controls the Drinking Water Now?

It is quite difficult to find out who owns the water and how, and where it is treated. Many sources have contradicting answers and they are very unclear. Currently, a private company called Acea is in control of Rome’s water (Emmy, 2017). They gained full control of drinking water in Rome in 1964, and in 1971 Acea finished building a new aqueduct; the Aqua Peschiera. Throughout the 1970’s they did multiple expansions and created the Peschiera-Capore system which is the biggest aqueduct system in the world (Emmy, 2017).

Current Parameters

Today in Rome there are much higher drinking water quality standards than there was in Ancient Rome. All of the modern Italian water regulations stem from the 2020 EU Drinking Water Directive. Currently there are four numerical parameters which include microbiological parameters, chemical parameters, indicator parameters, and “parameters relevant for the risk assessment of domestic distribution systems” (European Parliament, 2020). There are also parameters for monitoring and sampling. These include the frequency, type of tests, and location of the tests. There are also requirements on the systems used to treat the drinking water, like what the chemicals and devices can do to the water as well as what materials come in contact with the water.

Conclusions

Comparisons

The part that I think is beautiful about Rome is how everything old is kept, at least in recent history we tried to keep the history that built this city. That is why it is so fascinating to walk around the city and see how things used to be done two thousand years ago. The first similarity between modern and ancient Rome I found is when I toured the ruins of aqueducts. They have built newer aqueducts like the Aqua Felice shown above in figure 9. They are also still using an ancient aqueduct, the Aqua Virgine , to bring water into the city. This aqueduct flows into the magnificent Trevi Fountain pictured above in figure 10. I honestly had no idea that there was still a working aqueduct that supplies Rome with water. I was thinking to myself how amazing it is that something the Romans were doing two thousand years ago is still being done today. Another similarity I noticed is the use of settling tanks.

As you can see in figures 11 and 12 below, the settling tank we use today are very similar to the settling tanks used in Ancient Rome. Another technique that is used now as well as Ancient Rome is aeration. This happened almost by default thanks to the fountains at the end of the aqueducts as well as the aqueducts themselves. They helped to keep the water flowing so that bad bacteria does not start to grow.

Of course, there are many treatment methods we have today that the Ancient Romans did not have. For example, now we have sophisticated treatment plants that use chemicals and mechanical methods to prepare water for consumption. Most treatment plants today of course use a system of coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection. Now, I could not find anything on specific treatment plants in Rome but from the information in the EU Drinking Water Directive I can assume they use a similar process to that.

Resources

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Dembskey, E.J. (2009). The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome. Masters’ thesis in Ancient History. University of South Africa. http://www.romanaqueducts.info/aquapub/dembskey2009Rometxt1.pdf

Di Donfrancesco, G. (2023, December 9). Italian utility in hot water for draining a picturesque lake to send water to Rome. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Retrieved September 17, 2024, from https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/italian-utility-in-hot-water-for-draining-a-picturesque-lake-to-send-water-to-rome/

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