Pont du Gard France

Legendary

View the well preserved ancient Roman aqueduct that transported water 50 km to the colony of Nemausus.

Photo by Water Alternatives Photos

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The water that crossed this bridge dropped just 2.5 centimeters from one end to the other. That's across a span of 456 meters, roughly the height of a coin over the length of four football fields.

Roman engineers did that on purpose, without lasers, computers, or even a decent map. Get the slope wrong and the water either stops or floods.

The Pont du Gard was built by the Romans in the 1st century AD, in what is now southern France. It's the tallest part of an aqueduct that ran about 50 kilometers from a spring near the town of Uzès to the city of Nîmes.

Nîmes was a rich Roman colony called Nemausus. It had baths, fountains, and gardens, and its own spring couldn't keep up.

So the Romans went looking for water in the hills. The route they picked had to cross the gorge of the Gardon River, and that's where they built the bridge.

It rises nearly 49 meters above the river, the highest aqueduct bridge the Romans ever built. Three rows of arches stack on top of each other: six on the bottom, eleven in the middle, and thirty-five small ones on top.

The water ran in a covered channel along that top row. Over the whole 50 kilometers, the aqueduct drops only about 17 meters, so the water flowed by gravity alone.

The blocks weigh up to six tons each, and the lower levels are fitted together with no mortar at all. Stone knobs still stick out from the sides, left there to hold scaffolding and later used by repair crews.

The aqueduct carried water for about 500 years. It stopped working around the 6th century, but the bridge stayed useful as a river crossing, and it's been repaired many times since.

UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 1985. It's the most visited ancient monument in France.

Walk across the lower level, which is open to everyone, and look up at the arches stacked above you. Swim or paddle a canoe in the Gardon River below for the best view of all three tiers. Visit the museum on the left bank to see how the Romans surveyed and built the whole aqueduct.