Aqueduc Médicis
The Aqueduc Médicis is an aqueduct in Paris that was built between 1613 and 1623 and is still functional, although it has since lost its importance for the water supply of Paris.
prehistory
Paris, or the town of Lutetia in the Roman province of Gaul , which was no longer important at the time , had been supplied with a 16 km long, mostly underground aqueduct since the 2nd century , the water from the area of Wissous ( near today's Rungis not far from Orly airport ) via Fresnes , by means of an aqueduct bridge over the Bièvre and finally to the thermal baths near the Seine . This aqueduct fell into disrepair when the inhabitants withdrew to the Île de la Cité at the beginning of the migration . Almost nothing is left of the aqueduct, but its lines were taken over from the later lines.
Between the 12th and 14th centuries, Paris developed into a city with 200,000 inhabitants who now predominantly settled on the right bank. The monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions covered their water needs with newly built aqueducts that tapped springs in the northwest in the area of today's Ménilmontant and only survived for a short time. The population was largely dependent on water from the Seine or from individual wells.
Aqueduc Médicis
In the 15th century Paris had grown to 600,000 inhabitants. Henry IV had dug various wells and had the La Samaritaine pumping station built under the Pont Neuf to supply water to the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuileries . As before, the population had to make do with the water of the Seine, the quality of which had deteriorated significantly with the increasing population. Public hygiene was a serious problem, the plague and other epidemics were rampant. Henry IV therefore initiated the search for traces of the Roman aqueduct, but it proved impossible to rebuild the work that had long since passed. He therefore ordered the construction of a new aqueduct - shortly before his murder in 1610.
His wife Maria de 'Medici , who had been crowned queen the day before , continued the order. Thomas Francine , the director of the Eaux et Fontaines du Roi (royal fountain master ), advised on the planning and tendering of the project . Work on the work, later named after Maria de 'Medici, began in Rungis in 1613 far outside the city with the pipes called Carré des Eaux , laid in a large rectangle , which carried the water from the springs there to the collecting basin and inspection building no. 1, directed by Regard Louis XIII ( ). The aqueduct runs slightly above the route of the Roman viaduct and crosses the Bièvre valley with an aqueduct bridge on the same route ( ). After ten years of construction, the approximately 13 km long line ended at the Maison du Fontainier , the house of the royal fountain keeper in the 14th arrondissement ( ), which is also counted as No. 27 of the inspection buildings evenly distributed along the route. In the Maison du Fontainier planned by Thomas Francine , it was distributed over three basins for the needs of the Palais du Luxembourg and its park , the ecclesiastical institutions and finally the general population. However, it took another five years before distribution lines to public wells were built. The water was valued for its clarity and good taste
Over the course of the next hundred years, the Maison du Fontainier installed distribution lines to various public fountains. At the instigation of Anne d'Autriche , who resided in the Palais Royal with her underage son Louis XIV , a line was even relocated under the Pont Neuf to the other side of the Seine, which also supplied two public fountains there. In the course of time, various important people succeeded in establishing official or unofficial private connections to the lines. Attempts were made to compensate for the increased consumption with little success by opening up further sources at Rungis. The Aqueduc Médicis was more or less well maintained over time, but hardly at all during the revolution .
In 1856, when Eugène Belgrand began working for the water supply of Paris, an elevated reservoir was built on the Panthéon , into which water was pumped from the Seine in order to supply the city from there by gravity. In order to also feed the water from the Aqueduc Médicis into this reservoir, which is almost 9 m higher, Belgrand had a pressure pipeline installed in the lower third of the aqueduct and connected to the Panthéon on a new route.
When the Aqueduc de la Vanne , built by Belgrand, took over the water supply of Paris with a 20 times larger capacity, the Aqueduc Médicis became meaningless. Its water was still used for the Jardin du Luxembourg and the avenue de l'Observatoire . After it was temporarily only used to flush the sewer pipes, it has been flowing into the Parc Montsouris since 1904 .
The major construction work around Rungis from the 1960s ( Orly airport , railway lines and roads, industrial settlements, Rungis wholesale market ) severely disrupted the groundwater conditions, so that today hardly any water flows through the Aqueduc Médicis, which can no longer be used as drinking water .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ In French, aqueduc usually refers to the entire water pipe, while pont aqueduc refers to a specific bridge in the course of the pipe.
- ^ Thermes de Cluny in the Musée national du Moyen Âge
- ^ De Lutèce à Paris. In: Aqueducs des chemins pour l'eau, p. 12 (PDF; 2.2 MB), on eaudeparis.fr
- ↑ Les sources du nord au Moyen Age. In: Aqueducs des chemins pour l'eau, p. 14 (PDF; 2.2 MB), on eaudeparis.fr
- ↑ Today there are two soccer fields above the Carré des Eaux .
- ↑ Note N ° PA00086607 on Base Mérimée
- ↑ L'Aqueduc Medicis on Ruedeslumieres.morkitu.org
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