Aqueduct of Segovia

Overview

The Aqueduct of Segovia is a Roman water bridge of the early 2nd century AD that still runs straight through the middle of the city, and there is no gate, no ticket desk and no closing time: the official listing simply says open permanently. Water travelled 16,186 metres from a weir in the Sierra de Guadarrama to reach it, and the stretch everyone photographs is the 959 metres of arcade that ends at Plaza del Azoguejo, where the channel sits 28.10 metres above the paving on 167 arches.

The detail that earns it twenty minutes rather than two is what is holding it up. Nothing. The granite is laid dry: 20,400 blocks resting on 120 pillars, balanced against each other without mortar, clamps or cement, and the thing was still delivering drinking water to Segovia in the last third of the 20th century. Segovia’s tourism board claims it as the best preserved Roman aqueduct in the world.

It is not a roped-off ruin. Cars drove between the piers until 1992, when traffic under the arcade was finally banned. What is left is a square with a monument standing in it, used as a meeting point, a shortcut and a bus-stop landmark by people who are not looking up.

The arches also work as Spain’s most reproduced piece of municipal branding. They appear on Segovia’s flag and coat of arms, and they were used as the mint mark stamped on coins struck in the city. If you want the engineering explained properly there is an Aqueduct Interpretation Centre, and it sits, for that coin-stamping reason, inside the old Royal Mint on the far side of town. Hours and prices are under Visiting.

History

Nobody can give you a construction date, and the two organisations you would most trust disagree. Segovia’s tourism board puts the aqueduct after 112 AD, at the end of Trajan’s reign or already into Hadrian’s. The competing reading comes from the dedication plaque that is no longer there: the Hungarian epigrapher Géza Alföldy reconstructed the lost bronze lettering from the anchor holes still visible in the stone and read it as Domitian, who reigned from 81 to 96 AD.

The first written mention is medieval, not Roman. It turns up in a Segovia cathedral document of 1201, and the earliest known picture of it is a 12th-century Romanesque corbel in the church at Peñasrrubias, followed by Cantiga 107 of Alfonso X, written around 1280.

In 1072 the structure was broken, and 36 arches were lost. They were rebuilt in the 15th century under Ferdinand and Isabella, with the work supervised by Pedro Mesa, prior of the Jerónimos monastery nearby, who followed the Roman proportions closely enough that most visitors never notice the join. The rebuilt arches are pointed rather than round; once you have that, you can pick out the medieval section from the square.

The two niches high on the arcade at Azoguejo held statues rather than inscriptions from the 16th century onwards. One took an image of the Virgin, placed in 1520 and paid for by Antonio de la Jardina, an assayer at the old mint; the other held Saint Sebastian, patron of Segovia’s coin makers. The Virgin stayed up there for very nearly five centuries.

Protection came in stages. The aqueduct was declared a historic monument on 11 October 1884, and Segovia’s old town and its aqueduct went onto the UNESCO World Heritage list on 6 December 1985. Water stopped running through the channel in 1973, when the city moved to modern pipes.

The serious damage was done by the 20th century rather than by 1072. Exhaust fumes and vibration from the traffic running between the piers ate at the granite until the ban in 1992, the same year a restoration campaign began under the architect Francisco Jurado that ran for roughly eight years. Stone deterioration and water leakage were still enough of a worry for the World Monuments Fund to put the aqueduct on its 2006 Watch list. Scaffolding on the arcade now means cleaning and monitoring, not rebuilding.

Visiting

There is nothing to organise. The monument is open permanently, costs nothing, and you can stand under it at four in the morning if that is when you happen to be awake. Start in Plaza del Azoguejo, directly beneath the highest point, where the double tier of arches carries the channel 28.10 metres over your head. Look up at the two niches on the tall central arches: one holds an image of the Virgin, and the original that occupied it from 1520 to 2015 is now in the Interpretation Centre.

Then walk the arcade rather than photographing one end of it. The 959 metres of arches step down in height as the ground rises, from double tier to single, until the channel disappears below the pavement altogether and carries on underground towards the Alcázar. Near the upper end, a few metres above where the arcade starts, is the Casita de Piedra, the Chamberí sand trap, where grit was settled out of the flow. Half an hour covers the walk at a normal pace, an hour if you stop.

That visitor centre sits at the foot of the arches and is the practical hub for the whole visit: it opens Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 18:00, Sundays 10:00 to 14:30, sells tickets on a shorter window that closes at 17:30 on weekdays and Saturdays and at 14:00 on Sundays, and rents audioguides for city routes in Spanish and English. It also holds a large wooden model of Segovia by Roberto Guldris, which is the fastest way to understand where the underground channel goes.

The Aqueduct Interpretation Centre is the other half of a proper visit, and it is not next to the aqueduct. It occupies the Real Casa de Moneda at Calle de la Moneda, outside the walls down in the Eresma valley, so budget a walk down through the old town and a climb back. One ticket covers the Interpretation Centre, the Royal Mint museum and the Jardín del Rey with an audioguide: 5.00 euros full, 4.00 reduced, free for children up to and including 12 and on non-holiday Wednesdays. It closes Mondays and Tuesdays; from 1 July to 30 September it opens Wednesday to Saturday 10:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 19:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 14:30, and from October the afternoon session ends at 18:00 instead. Last entry is 30 minutes before closing.

If you want the aqueduct explained on the ground, the tourism company runs guided routes from the visitor centre, including a World Heritage itinerary and a walk out to the weir that fed the channel. Book those in advance; you cannot book the arches, because there is nothing to book.

Tips

• Do not go looking for a ticket office for the arches. The monument is open permanently and free, day and night, in every season.

• Wednesday is the free day at the Aqueduct Interpretation Centre, as long as it is not a public holiday. The catch: the audioguide that comes with a paid ticket is not included on Wednesdays, and hiring one separately costs extra.

• Check the day before you go rather than trusting a printed schedule. The Centre’s own page warns that its hours are subject to change and asks visitors to confirm for the exact date of the visit, on (+34) 921 47 51 09.

• The Centre shuts for lunch, and the gap is long: closed between 14:00 and 16:00 every day it opens, and on Sundays it does not reopen at all after 14:30.

• For the best wide view of the arcade, walk up Calle San Juan. The city put the devil of the legend there as a bronze by José Antonio Abella, holding the last block he never laid and taking a selfie with his unfinished work, precisely because the panorama from that spot is one of the best in Segovia.

• Sort out tickets for anything else in Segovia before mid-afternoon. The visitor centre at Azoguejo, 1 stops selling at 17:30 on Monday to Saturday and at 14:00 on Sundays, even though the desk itself stays open longer.

• Arriving by train or coach, ask at the desk in the station rather than walking in blind. There are tourist information points inside both the Segovia-Guiomar railway station and the municipal bus station, plus one at Plaza del Socorro beside the Puerta de San Andrés if you are coming at the walls from the other side.

• Give the arcade the early morning or the late evening if you can. Day trippers from Madrid and coach parties work to museum hours, and the plaza empties out either side of them.

• The floodlighting makes the night view better than the midday one. Shadow raking across dry-laid granite shows the joints between blocks that flat noon light flattens out completely.