The Emperor Who Abandoned the Aqueducts

In 312 AD, Roman engineers completed the Aqua Claudia, one of the most magnificent aqueducts ever built — forty-six miles of precisely graded channels carrying fresh mountain spring water into the heart of Rome. For centuries, these aqueducts sustained over a million people with clean, flowing water. But as the empire crumbled, successive rulers neglected the infrastructure. Rather than maintaining the aqueducts, medieval Romans dug shallow wells and carved crude cisterns into the ground.…