 Bridges are dramatic especially when they're lit up at night But they're not the only water problem that the Romans have to solve here in Augusta emerita They also had to figure out how to get water to them. So I'm gonna look at bridges and aqueducts today now I Thought I was gonna be all smart and ride out to this little bridge over the alcantarilla Um, it's near the Guadiana. It's little and I was like, oh, this is really cool And I get out there and there's no sign explain it. I'm like, dang There's a lot of Roman ruins when you have something of Roman origin and It doesn't even have a sign telling you what it is and I oh, yeah, I Thought I was smart and you know I was recording on Strava and I was like, oh, yeah I got out here and I kept going I went out into the country and I enjoyed that and then I decided to come back into town And I click and on my ride though. I wasn't back to the hotel and I stopped in front of a Roman bridge that I didn't take a picture of Because there are that many Roman ruins that nothing is mentioned. I then of course proceeded to ride back over anyway So these two bridges are small but the showstopper is this one over the Guadiana it's More than half a mile long. I think it rates it seven-tenths of a kilometer. So it's pretty decent size bridge and The whole thing isn't Roman But it was initially constructed by the Roman in this part here definitely is and If you go out into the island in the middle of the river you can see That the arches look pretty good and in fact when you get up close to it I tried to stick my thumb into the joints to show you just how tight they were and it's really well fitted even after all these years and all of the Being near the elements because you know rivers flood anyway The Romans knew how to build a bridge They also liked a good water feature in town even if this one's kind of gross This was in front of the temple of the Nerva and it's really nasty and stagnant but it underlines a fact that people have to have water and They did just that the Romans brought it in when they couldn't go underground Which they definitely did they brought it in aqueducts As you can see they didn't necessarily survive time, but this one is called aqueduct with De Los Milagros It's not in great shape this one over here it's called the aqueduct of San Lathro and it's in considerably better shape It also has a bike trail in front of it. Can you guess how I found out about the bike trail anyway? So this water would be brought from various sources either Springs bubbling up or they dam up something I believe aqueduct De Los Milagros was fed by Dammed up reservoirs and Aqueduct of San Lathro San Lathro was fed by Springs bubbling up anyway They would be brought into town and this is just outside of where the walls to the city would have been and I'll give you a little help seeing the course of the aqueduct Would have been brought in and Here's some more With some more help from your imagination they would have brought it in and put it into sedimentation or catchment Cisterns where basically they take all the nasty sediment out Because who wants to drink all the nasty stuff and water you've got to treat it somehow and the Romans actually did that which is Pretty advanced So that's kind of all I've got for you today. It feels kind of perfunctory to me. So Add a comment and tell me how I so dearly messed to this up that does seem to be the thing the classics community loves to do um drop me a like if you want to let the algorithm know what to do and Subscribe if you feel like I'm saying things that are useful next week Definitely not going to be more of Spain though. I do have a little more to share till next time