Aqueduct of Segovia
— — granite that has carried water for nineteen centuries.
Not only on a wall.
“In the Plaza del Azoguejo the aqueduct rises almost twenty-nine metres above the street, a double tier of granite arches set without mortar. Roman engineers chose the stone for its weight; gravity holds the joints. The water that once climbed from the Fuente Fría has been diverted, but the channel along the top still catches the morning sun before the cafés open below.
Aqueduct of Segovia, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Aqueduct of Segovia stands in the historic centre of Segovia, in Castile and León, about 90 km north-west of Madrid. Built in the late 1st or early 2nd century, most likely under the Emperor Trajan, it carried water roughly 17 km from the Fuente Fría River on the Sierra de Guadarrama slopes down to the city. The surviving above-ground section comprises some 167 arches, reaching a maximum height of 28.5 m above the Plaza del Azoguejo, and was inscribed with the old town on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1985.
The blocks are quarried from local Guadarrama granite, a coarse hard stone that resists weather and weight. The masonry rises in a double tier of arches across the lowest ground at the Plaza del Azoguejo, where the terrain falls away most steeply. Each block was shaped to interlock with its neighbours; gravity and friction alone hold the structure together. Inscription holes on the attic frieze once carried a bronze dedication, long since lost, and the aqueduct continued to supply water to the city of Segovia into the late 19th century.
The aqueduct can be walked the full length of its surviving run, from the Plaza del Azoguejo up the slope toward the city walls and the Alcázar. Viewing is free, with the best photographs from the staircases at either end of the bridge. Segovia's old town, also inscribed by UNESCO in 1985, holds the late-Gothic cathedral and the storybook Alcázar above the confluence of the Eresma and Clamores rivers. High-speed AVE trains from Madrid-Chamartín reach Segovia-Guiomar in under thirty minutes, with a city bus to the foot of the aqueduct.