Scoperta la sorgente dell'Aqua Traiana - Lost acqueduct and beautiful nymphaeum rediscovered near Rome on 1900th aniversary after inauguration.

The primary source of the Emperor Trajan's Aqueduct, the Aqua Traiana, has been identified north of Rome by British HD documentary team Michael and Edward O'Neill on the 1900th anniversary of the aqueduct's inauguration. The significance of the site will be revealed at a press conference in Hotel Quirinale, via Nazionale 7, Rome, on Thursday, January 28th at 15:00.

An ancient water source in Etruscan times, the web of springs was encapsulated by the Roman engineers in a vaulted, three-chambered semicircular 'nymphaeum', which served as a springhouse and probably contained the statue of a Roman river god or nymph. The ancient water source was commemorated by a sestertius coin minted by the Emperor Trajan when he inaugurated his aqueduct and his public baths in the centre of Rome, 1900 years ago.
For perhaps a thousand years or more, Trajan's sacred water source was hidden under a Christian Church, now ruined and dismantled. The ancient aqueduct still emerges from under the church's meagre remains. The water collection chamber of the Caput Aquae (headwaters) and 125 metres of the Roman Aqueduct gallery are still in pristine condition as compared with many crumbling ruins in the centre of Rome. The entire area is rich in springs and while many other smaller springs were probably also tapped to augment the Traiana, this was without a doubt the primary spring.

Ancient evidence and Papal records confirm that this shrine is almost certainly the primary water source of Trajan's aqueduct: The vaulted ceilings are all richly decorated with expensive Egyptian blue pigment, which strongly suggests that the great Emperor Trajan, proclaimed Optimus Princeps, almost certainly was here personally for his aqueduct's inauguration.
Until recently, this water source was considered by some to be a local, regional aqueduct of eighteenth-century origin. However, a descent below the chapel with powerful lights for filming of the underground galleries revealed that the brickwork and waterproof hydraulic cement lining the tunnels is absolutely characteristic of the Trajanic age.

On 24th June, precisely one thousand nine hundred years after the inauguration, worldwide aqueduct authority Prof. Lorenzo Quilici1 visited the newly discovered springhouse-shrine and its labyrinth of underground water galleries. "È TUTTO ROMANO!" – it's ALL ROMAN! – he immediately exclaimed.
Documentary filmmakers Michael and Edward O'Neill discovered the site in extraordinary and adventurous circumstances, and are now raising money to film the ongoing preservation, excavation, documentation and opening to the public.

Ted and Mike have invited two American scholars, Katherine Rinne (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia, and California College of the Arts) and Rabun Taylor (University of Texas at Austin), to investigate the site further and to seek resources to undertake its survey, excavation, and publication.
Katherine Rinne, an expert on the hydraulic history of Rome in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and the Project Director for "Aquae Urbis Romae: the Waters of the City of Rome," an online resource for the study of Rome's water history over 3000 years, is drawn to the many extraordinary features of this site dating from the ancient, medieval and the early modern periods.

Prof. Rabun Taylor wrote his dissertation on the ancient aqueducts of the city of Rome and has published widely on the architecture and hydraulics of the city. He traced the course of the Aqua Traiana within the city, from its point of entry high on the Janiculum Hill to its crossing of the Tiber River near the modern Ponte Sublicio. "This is a discovery of almost unprecedented importance in the long history of aqueduct studies," he said.