• Its design, based on an earlier Roman model, with a circular vasque on a pedestal pouring water into a basin below, became the model for many other fountains in Rome, and
  eventually for fountains in other cities, from Paris to London.

• The Venetian Ambassador wrote in 1523, “… On one side of the garden is a most beautiful loggia, at one end of which is a lovely fountain that irrigates the orange trees
  and the rest of the garden by a little canal in the center of the loggia …[27] The original garden was split in two by the construction of the Vatican Library in the 16th century, but a new fountain by Carlo Maderno was built in the Cortile
  del Belvedere, with a jet of water shooting up from a circular stone bowl on an octagonal pedestal in a large basin.

• [45] In the mid-nineteenth century the first fountains were built in the United States, connected to the first aqueducts bringing drinking water from outside the city.

• The excavations of Pompeii also showed that the homes of wealthy Romans often had a small fountain in the atrium, or interior courtyard, with water coming from the city water
  supply and spouting into a small bowl or basin.

• By the end of the 19th century fountains in big cities were no longer used to supply drinking water, and were simply a form of art and urban decoration.

• The most famous fountains of this kind were found in the Villa d’Este (1550–1572), at Tivoli near Rome, which featured a hillside of basins, fountains and jets of water, as
  well as a fountain which produced music by pouring water into a chamber, forcing air into a series of flute-like pipes.

• [46] The 19th century also saw the introduction of new materials in fountain construction; cast iron (the Fontaines de la Concorde); glass (the Crystal Fountain in London
  (1851)) and even aluminium (the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London, (1897)).

• [41] 19th century fountains [edit] • Fontaine du Palmier, Paris (1809) • Fountain in the Place de la Concorde in Paris (1840) • Fountain in Trafalgar Square, (1845) • Bethesda
  Fountain in Central Park, New York City (1873) In the early 19th century, London and Paris built aqueducts and new fountains to supply clean drinking water to their exploding populations.

• Most Greek fountains flowed by simple gravity, but they also discovered how to use principle of a siphon to make water spout, as seen in pictures on Greek vases.

• [9] During the Middle Ages, Roman aqueducts were wrecked or fell into decay, and many fountains throughout Europe stopped working, so fountains existed mainly in art and literature,
  or in secluded monasteries or palace gardens.

• That fountain still exists today, with a long basin of water and statues added in 1866.

• • Stravinsky Fountain, next to the Pompidou Center, Paris (1983) • Fontaine de la Pyramide, Cour Napoléon of the Louvre, (1988) • Fontaine Cristaux, Homage to Béla Bartok,
  Jean-Yves Lechevallier, Paris, (1980) • Fountain at Raisina Hill, Rajpath near Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi (1929) Paris fountains in the 20th century no longer had to supply drinking water – they were purely decorative; and, since their water
  usually came from the river and not from the city aqueducts, their water was no longer drinkable.

• [25] One of the first new fountains to be built in Rome during the Renaissance was the fountain in the piazza in front of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere (1472), which
  was placed on the site of an earlier Roman fountain.

• The sebil was a decorated fountain that was often the only source of water for the surrounding neighborhood.

• [12] Medieval fountains could also provide amusement.

• The garden was modified over the centuries – the jets of water which cross the canal today were added in the 19th century.

• They described fountains which formed water into different shapes and a wind-powered water pump,[16] but it is not known if any of their fountains were ever actually built.

• [48] 20th century fountains [edit] • The “Pont d’eau’ from the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibit, created a “bridge” of water forty meters long and six meters wide.

• Pliny the Younger described the banquet room of a Roman villa where a fountain began to jet water when visitors sat on a marble seat.

• The garden of Fin, near Kashan, used 171 spouts connected to pipes to create a fountain called the Howz-e jush, or “boiling basin”.

• The theme of a fountain with statues symbolizing great rivers was later used in the Place de la Concorde (1836–40) and in the Fountain of Neptune in the Alexanderplatz in
  Berlin (1891).

• The medieval romance The Roman de la Rose describes a fountain in the center of an enclosed garden, feeding small streams bordered by flowers and fresh herbs.

• There were so many fountains at Versailles that it was impossible to have them all running at once; when Louis XIV made his promenades, his fountain-tenders turned on the
  fountains ahead of him and turned off those behind him.

• Illustrations of fountains in gardens spouting water are found on wall paintings in Rome from the 1st century BC, and in the villas of Pompeii.

• Napoleon Bonaparte started construction on the first canals bringing drinking water to Paris, fifteen new fountains, the most famous being the Fontaine du Palmier in the Place
  du Châtelet, (1896–1808), celebrating his military victories.

• [37] The Trevi Fountain is the largest and most spectacular of Rome’s fountains, designed to glorify the three different Popes who created it.

• According to ancient historians, fountains existed in Athens, Corinth, and other ancient Greek cities in the 6th century BC as the terminating points of aqueducts which brought
  water from springs and rivers into the cities.

• Until the late 19th century most fountains operated by gravity, and needed a source of water higher than the fountain, such as a reservoir or aqueduct, to make the water flow
  or jet into the air.

• [14] Water sometimes spouted from a fountain in the center of the cross, representing the spring or fountain, Salsabil, described in the Qur’an as the source of the rivers
  of Paradise.

• King Henry IV of France made an important contribution to French fountains by inviting an Italian hydraulic engineer, Tommaso Francini, who had worked on the fountains of
  the villa at Pratalino, to make fountains in France.

• The fountain, which originally stood against the wall of the church of the Holy Innocents, as rebuilt several times and now stands in a square near Les Halles.

• The Roman engineers used lead pipes instead of bronze to distribute the water throughout the city.

• [30] By the middle Renaissance, fountains had become a form of theater, with cascades and jets of water coming from marble statues of animals and mythological figures.

• Two of Napoleon’s fountains, the Chateau d’Eau and the fountain in the Place des Vosges, were the first purely decorative fountains in Paris, without water taps for drinking
  water.

• According to Sextus Julius Frontinus, the Roman consul who was named curator aquarum or guardian of the water of Rome in 98 AD, Rome had nine aqueducts which fed 39 monumental
  fountains and 591 public basins, not counting the water supplied to the Imperial household, baths and owners of private villas.

• The first famous American decorative fountain was the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in New York City, opened in 1873.

• Its form, with a large circular vasque on a pedestal pouring water into a basin and an inverted vasque above it spouting water, was imitated two centuries later in the Fountains
  of the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

• [5] Ancient Roman fountains [edit] Reconstruction of a Roman courtyard fountain in Pompeii (1st century AD) The Ancient Romans built an extensive system of aqueducts from
  mountain rivers and lakes to provide water for the fountains and baths of Rome.

• [1] By the end of the 19th century, as indoor plumbing became the main source of drinking water, urban fountains became purely decorative.

• In the center is the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, (The Fountain of the Four Rivers) (1648–51), a highly theatrical fountain by Bernini, with statues representing rivers from
  the four continents; the Nile, Danube, Plate River and Ganges.

• In these fountains, sculpture became the principal element, and the water was used simply to animate and decorate the sculptures.

• The gardens also featured giochi d’acqua, water jokes, hidden fountains which suddenly soaked visitors.

• The great Medici Villa at Castello, built for Cosimo by Benedetto Varchi, featured two monumental fountains on its central axis; one showing with two bronze figures representing
  Hercules slaying Antaeus, symbolizing the victory of Cosimo over his enemies; and a second fountain, in the middle of a circular labyrinth of cypresses, laurel, myrtle and roses, had a bronze statue by Giambologna which showed the goddess
  Venus wringing her hair.

• [28] In 1537, in Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici, who had become ruler of the city at the age of only 17, also decided to launch a program of aqueduct and fountain building.

• These fountains were the work of the descendants of Tommaso Francini, the Italian hydraulic engineer who had come to France during the time of Henry IV and built the Medici
  Fountain and the Fountain of Diana at Fontainebleau.

• The fountains at either end are by Giacomo della Porta; the Neptune fountain to the north, (1572) shows the God of the Sea spearing an octopus, surrounded by tritons, sea
  horses and mermaids.

• “[31] The first of the Fountains of St. Peter’s Square, by Carlo Maderno, (1614) was one of the earliest Baroque fountains in Rome, made to complement the lavish Baroque façade
  he designed for St. Peter’s Basilica behind it.

• One surviving example is the Fountain of Tears (1764) at the Bakhchisarai Palace, in Crimea; which was made famous by a poem of Alexander Pushkin.

• Fountains can themselves also be musical instruments played by obstruction of one or more of their water jets.

• Simple fountains, called lavabos, were placed inside Medieval monasteries such as Le Thoronet Abbey in Provence and were used for ritual washing before religious services.

• The 17th and 18th centuries were a golden age for fountains in Rome, which began with the reconstruction of ruined Roman aqueducts and the construction by the Popes of mostra,
  or display fountains, to mark their termini.

• [4] Hellenistic fountain head from the Pergamon museum Greek fountains were made of stone or marble, with water flowing through bronze pipes and emerging from the mouth of
  a sculpted mask that represented the head of a lion or the muzzle of an animal.

• The Triton fountain benefited from its location in a valley, and the fact that it was fed by the Aqua Felice aqueduct, restored in 1587, which arrived in Rome at an elevation
  of 194 feet (59 m) above sea level (fasl), a difference of 130 feet (40 m) in elevation between the source and the fountain, which meant that the water from this fountain jetted sixteen feet straight up into the air from the conch shell of
  the triton.

• The first fountain in New York City, in City Hall Park, opened in 1842, and the first fountain in Boston was turned on in 1848.

• Louis Napoleon relocated and rebuilt several earlier fountains, such as the Medici Fountain and the Fontaine de Leda, when their original sites were destroyed by his construction
  projects.

• History Ancient fountains [edit] An Egyptian fountain on the Temple of Dendera Ancient civilizations built stone basins to capture and hold precious drinking water.

• Louis built an enormous pumping station, the Machine de Marly, with fourteen water wheels and 253 pumps to raise the water three hundred feet from the River Seine, and even
  attempted to divert the River Eure to provide water for his fountains, but the water supply was never enough.

• In the Gardens of Versailles, instead of falling naturally into a basin, water was shot into the sky, or formed into the shape of a fan or bouquet.

• In 1453, he began to rebuild the Acqua Vergine, the ruined Roman aqueduct which had brought clean drinking water to the city from eight miles (13 km) away.

• Palaces themselves often had small decorated fountains, which provided drinking water, cooled the air, and made a pleasant splashing sound.

• In the Middle Ages, Moorish and Muslim garden designers used fountains to create miniature versions of the gardens of paradise.

• Medieval fountains [edit] Lavabo at Le Thoronet Abbey, Provence, (12th century) In Nepal there were public drinking fountains at least as early as 550 AD.

• Fountains in the Middle Ages were associated with the source of life, purity, wisdom, innocence, and the Garden of Eden.

• The Persian engineers also used the principle of the syphon (called shotor-gelu in Persian, literally ‘neck of the camel) to create fountains which spouted water or made it
  resemble a bubbling spring.

• Once inside the palace or garden it came up through a small hole in a marble or stone ornament and poured into a basin or garden channels.

• Islamic gardens after the 7th century were traditionally enclosed by walls and were designed to represent paradise.

• The most famous fountain built by Louis Napoleon was the Fontaine Saint-Michel, part of his grand reconstruction of Paris boulevards.

• It was fed by water from the Paola aqueduct, restored in 1612, whose source was 266 feet (81 m) above sea level, which meant it could shoot water twenty feet up from the fountain.

• He also restored and put back into service some of the city’s oldest fountains, such as the Medici Fountain.

• The excavations at Pompeii, which revealed the city as it was when it was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, uncovered free-standing fountains and basins placed at intervals
  along city streets, fed by siphoning water upwards from lead pipes under the street.

• “[38] Besides these two monumental fountains, the Gardens over the years contained dozens of other fountains, including thirty-nine animal fountains in the labyrinth depicting
  the fables of Jean de La Fontaine.

• In addition to providing drinking water, fountains were used for decoration and to celebrate their builders.

• The highest such fountain in the world is King Fahd’s Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which spouts water 260 metres (850 ft) above the Red Sea.

 

Works Cited

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Allain and Christiany, L’Art des jardins en Europe This type of “water joke” later became popular in Renaissance and baroque gardens.
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According to the Qur’an, the dead going to paradise would be given water from the spring Salsabil: “And there they will be given a cup whose mixture is of Zanjabil (ginger). A fountain there, called Salsabil.” (76:17–18)
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edited by Marilyn Symmes, London, 1998.
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originally had two upper basins, but the water pressure in the early Renaissance was so low that the water was unable to reach the upper basin, so the top basin was removed.
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Retrieved 26 March 2021.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/14646075@N03/4571353297/’]