Thugga's aqueduct

Description

The aqueduct, built between 184 and 187, is 11.03 km long; the linear distance between the city and the source is only 8.5 km. Most of the channel or specus – 90% – is underground. The aqueduct, which follows the contour lines and runs along the hillside, is provided with 130 still visible inspection shafts and crossed the valleys on 7 bridges, one of which is an 'inverted' siphon that had passed unnoticed until our prospection (DU232). Until today we know about 84 others siphons among the 1338 aqueducts scattered throughout the Roman empire.
Despite the distance of 11.03 km, the height difference between spring tank (site DU310) and the bottom of the public cistern of Thugga (site DU157) is only 10 m, which means an average of less than one meter per kilometer.