One of the major public works during the reign of Severus Alexander was the last of the eleven major Roman aqueducts built over the course of the Republic and the Empire, the Acqua Alexandrina.
It was completed in 226, five hundred and thirty eight years after Rome’s first successful aqueduct, the Aqua Appia had been laid out during the consulship of Appius Claudius. Rome as they say was indeed not built in a day. Today traces of the aqueduct snake through the eastern suburbs of the city, and the remains of its monumental castellum aquae, a great water tank and grand fountain, sit in the park at Piazza Vittorio Emanuele: the vestiges of Rome’s last great project of hydraulic engineering.
