Evora's Aqueduct

The first time that we saw the long aqueduct bringing water into Evora was at the Roman temple of Diana. It reminded us a lot of the aqueduct we saw in Mexico - the same gracefully curving arches going up into the hills around Queretaro. There is something special about seeing these big, beautiful structures carrying water over the land...

Growing cities need lots of clean, drinkable water to feed its population. We have been told by many people that the temperatures in the summer in this area can reach 45 and 50 degrees C. Apparently, the lack of drinking water was really holding Evora back from its growth.

So the Romans built an aqueduct, a gravity fed stone water trough, to carry water from a river in the hills 15km outside town. The water steadily and consistently flows down from its source to an end point high up in the hill city of Evora.

The land in this area rises and falls, but the aqueduct has to maintain a steady slope, dropping at most 10m every kilometre. So at times, the structure is quite low to the ground, or even goes underground in places. But when the land falls away, the aqueduct is the highest thing (26m high) in the landscape.

After the fall of Rome, the aqueduct fell into disrepair, but was rebuilt in the 1537 during Portugal’s Golden age, and again in the 1800’s.

It still provides some of the water needed for watering plants in parks and gardens in the city. Amazing!

P.S. Did you now that there were Griffin vultures (birds) in Portugal? Well, we saw one! Christina told us that they eat dead meat and that there is a bird in Spain that eats humans. But don’t worry, she said, they don’t live in Portugal!!!!Read more