Story
The story of pont du Gard
Look closely at the stones and you may spot the builders' marks: assembly signs showing where each block belonged, such as one meaning left face two, and carved phalluses meant to ward off evil. This three-tiered bridge carried a Roman aqueduct over the Gardon, bringing water more than 50 kilometres from the Fontaine d'Eure near Uzès to Nemausus, today's Nîmes.
Over its whole course the aqueduct drops only 12.6 metres, an average slope of 24.8 centimetres per kilometre, and the water took a full day to arrive. Probably built between the years 40 and 50, the bridge rises 48.77 metres above the river, the highest known aqueduct bridge in the Roman world.
It was built almost entirely without mortar, and some of its stones weigh six tonnes. In the Middle Ages the bridge served as a road bridge, and since December 1985 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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