Identified the largest Roman aqueduct of the Iberian Peninsula | Culture

The Valencian historian Pere Antoni Beuter He was the first to ask himself in 1538 to which towns the imposing aqueduct of Peña Cortada would supply what crossed the Valencian populations of Chelva, Calles, Domeño and Tujar. The experts of the time, and later, even discussed whether it worked at any time. Five centuries later, the archaeologist and doctor of architecture of the polytechnic university of Valencia Miquel R. Martí Maties, has given an answer at the VI International Congress of Roman Engineering, held in Santo Domingo de la Calzada (La Rioja): these sections were part of the largest aqueduct built in Hispania in Roman times. A total of 98.6 kilometers that started from a spring in the mountain range of Valencia, in Tuéjar, at 585 meters high, and ending in the current center of Valencia, at sea level. That is to say, the medieval azudes and ditches of the Valencian orchard are only an adaptation, by sections, of the engineering work designed by Rome.

However, this 1st century supply infrastructure d. C - which in principle had 93 kilometers and that crossed little stable lands - collapsed due to water seepage, in what is now the current Chelva municipal term. The Roman engineers then decided to cancel 6.4 kilometers of its route and add another 12 for geologically more stable areas of the limestone mountains, which gave it a final length of 98.6 kilometers. The landslide in Chelva left a straight cliff with the opening of the canal of the aqueduct, which is currently known in the town as the Balcony of the Devil.

Already in the sixth century, Valencia recovered economically and socially from the crisis and a new monumental architecture emerged. The Byzantines, who were looking for cereal for Constantinople, rebuilt the Valencian aqueduct with the collaboration of the elite of the Spanish-Roman city. A few kilometers inside, a Spanish-Byzantine city was built, called Valencia la Vella (Ribarroja del Turia) with walls and towers, which will be later conquered by the Visigoth king Leovigildo. The aqueduct from Vilamarxant will supply it.

In the Arab era, Valencia became the center again. In the ninth century, the Rovella ditch, recycling the Roman canal, penetrated directly into the capital from the hands of Muslims. “The difference between the Roman hydraulics (specially designed for human consumption) and the Islamic one is that between a good thick official cable of light and illegal shots of small cables in a neighborhood (azudes and ditches). Muslim ditches, with the same channel or not, follow the route designed by Rome. Therefore, the Arabs did not invent the Hispanic irrigation of which the Roman Cadiz agronomist Columela already spoke, nor the norias that were Greek. Rome was the pioneer as evidenced by the existence of the aqueduct, adapted by the Byzantines and Visigoths and then by Arabs and Christians, "concludes Martí Maties.