Aqueduct bridge over the Swist
The aqueduct bridge over the Swist between Rheinbach and Meckenheim near the town of Lüftelberg was a large construction of the Roman Eifel aqueduct from the 1st century. The original location of the structure can still be seen on the basis of a strip of rubble. Otherwise nothing of the aqueduct bridge can be seen in the area, as it was completely removed in post-ancient times through the extraction of building material.
The bridge was 1400 m long, reached its highest height in the area of the Swist with about 10 m (height of the canal bottom almost 9 m) and had up to 295 arched openings. Your gully was 70 cm wide and 100 cm high.
During excavations in 1981, an excavation cut found a stump of a pillar that was preserved up to a height of 1.1 m and had a floor plan of 1.2 m × 1.8 m. There was nothing to be found in the section of another five pillars. However, based on the excavation pits, it was possible to precisely determine their location and the arch width of the bridge to be 3.55 m (12 Roman feet ). Presumably the pillars were clad with hand blocks made of tuff .
The building material obtained from the aqueduct bridge can be seen in numerous structures. In the cloister of the Schillingscapellen monastery , the conically cut arch stones were used to build arches, the arch width of which is identical to the aqueduct bridge. The cloister with the arches is only partially preserved today.
The traces of the aqueduct bridge are station 34 of the Roman Canal hiking trail . A replica of the bridge's piers can be seen at station 35, which gives an impression of the structure.
The Swist valley with the Römerkanal hiking trail , about 200 meters southeast (left in the picture) ran the aqueduct bridge
Reconstructed pillar of the aqueduct near the former course of the aqueduct
Cross section of the gully
Hiking trail information to the Römerkanal aqueduct over the Swistbachtal
literature
- Klaus Grewe : Atlas of the Roman water pipes to Cologne (= Rhenish excavations. Volume 26). With contributions by Werner Brinker, Günther Garbrecht, Hansgerd Hellenkemper , Heinz-Otto Lamprecht, Horst D. Schulz , Edgar Thofern. Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-7927-0868-X , p. 134 ff.
- Klaus Grewe: Aqueducts. Water for Rome's cities. The big overview - from the Roman Canal to the aqueduct marble. Regionalia Verlag, Rheinbach 2014, ISBN 978-3-95540-127-6 , p. 280 ff and p. 297.
- Klaus Grewe, Manfred Knauff: The long leadership of the Romans. The Römerkanal hiking trail Nettersheim-Cologne. Publisher: Eifelverein eV 1st edition 2012. ISBN 978-3-921805-81-7 , pp. 188 ff.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 38 ′ 28 ″ N , 7 ° 0 ′ 47 ″ E