Walking Rome’s Waters

An engaging guide to the waterways of Rome and their role in shaping the city’s culture, history, and landscape

Written by a leading expert on the water infrastructure of Rome, this grand tour offers a new way to appreciate the history, geology, and character of the ancient and contemporary city. Richly illustrated itineraries wind through Rome’s streets, piazzas, and gardens, following the trail of water as it flows, propelled by gravity, through different neighborhoods. In addition to mapping thirteen walking tours, Katherine Wentworth Rinne also pulls the reader underground--where hidden springs and streams still flow--to illuminate how Rome’s complex topography has been transformed since antiquity, as well as into the sky, imaginatively flying over Rome’s villas and parks to give readers a sense of the infrastructure through an aerial view.

Whether enjoyed from an armchair at home or as a companion on strolls next to aqueducts, fountains, and the Tiber River, this guidebook, filled with the author’s unique insights, brings the vibrant world of Rome’s water to life, with its eddies and whorls twisting throughout the city’s storied history.

Katherine Wentworth Rinne is a visiting scholar in the Center for Cultural Landscapes in the School of Architecture and an associate fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia.