Aicher's work is a unique fusion of tour guide and archaelogical handbook, allowing the reader to view the Eternal City from the vantage point of an unmistakable yet overlooked feature of its topography.
Special Features
- maps
- schematics drawings
- photographs
- reprints of famous line drawings
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Aicher’s book provides something that has not previously been available and does it with thoroughness, readability, and accuracy...Aicher’s guide deserves much praise and is remarkably useful. He has earned the thanks of all who love the ruderi of Rome and of the Campagna for making one class of ruins far more readily accessible and intelligible. Anyone wanting to visit the aqueducts from now on must use it; any teacher wishing to present Roman hydraulic engineering — one of the greatest achievements of Roman technology — to her or his students would be well-advised to start here.
This handsomely produced volume presents itself as ‘an armchair introduction... and a guide to the ruins in and outside of the city of Rome.’ Indeed, even the most avid armchair archaeologist will long to head off in pursuit of Goethe’s ‘succession of triumphal arches’ so lovingly described in these pages.
[...] this straightforward guide offers far more than a catalog of the extant remains. It vividly reconstructs the history of the aqueducts and how their construction contributed to the development not only of Rome but of the outlying areas adjacent to them.
Extremely well written, with valuable maps and detailed directions to the remains. There is no comparable book in print...an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the Roman aqueduct system.
Guide to the Aqueducts is engaging, well presented, and well illustrated...Of interest to high school teachers as well as to college and university professors and travelers.
Enlivening and fascinating... this guide can serve both the appreciative tourist and the serious student of the ancient world... Its excellent bibliography confirms the quality and range of the scholarship which the author commands.
This book will remain the vade mecum of specialists and nonspecialists alike for some time to come.
[...] A. presents the state of our knowledge accurately and in due proportion, while focusing his efforts on producing a useful field guide; and in this he succeeds admirably. For those who wish to investigate the aqueducts further, he provides a full bibliography.
The volume will be indispensable to student field courses based in Rome, and will no doubt, by facilitating access to fragments hitherto often difficult to locate, help to stimulate fresh work on the aqueducts themselves. It is a book to be warmly welcomed.
It presents a well-balanced description of sites, remains and topographical background, with enough backup to encourage readers to investigate them with greater curiosity. Too often guides will mention a site and give its position on a map and leave the reader to find it on the ground. Aicher very skillfully provides all the necessary information about a site, but also takes pains to describe in words how to locate it as an added aid to the plans.
