Parco dell'Acquedotto Nottolini

Lorenzo Nottolini's 1822 aqueduct extends three kilometres from Lucca towards the hills on 460 brick arches, carrying water from springs near Guamo to the city.

Why it matters

Lucca's water arrived, for most of its history, from wells and the Serchio; the aqueduct changed that with imperial calm. In 1822 Duchess Maria Luisa di Borbone commissioned Lorenzo Nottolini to design a new supply from the hills south of Lucca. Construction began the following year, creating a monumental line of 460 arches in brick running about three kilometres from the city edge at San Concordio to a small neoclassical temple that collects the springs in the Guamo area. The aqueduct no longer carries water and survives as a monumental work of neoclassical engineering.

What to notice

The brick arches maintain a consistent gradient across the three-kilometre structure, which carried two separate conduits: one for drinking water and the other for the city's monumental fountains. At Guamo the arches end, while the aqueduct continues underground, marked by small wells known as pozzetti. An uncovered artificial canal descends from the mountains. The site called "Alle parole d'oro" takes its name from local farmers who mistook brass letters on a commemorative monument for gold. A circular neoclassical temple marks the springs.

Context and history

The aqueduct belongs to the long nineteenth-century rebuild of Lucca under its duchess. Maria Luisa di Borbone sponsored the modernisation of the city, and water supply was the flagship of public health: Nottolini's design of 1822 answered it, carrying spring water the final miles into a city whose fountains and households depended on it. The engineering system combined springs on the Monte Pisano slopes, a gravity line on arches, twin conduits for potable and decorative water, and an underground continuation beyond Guamo toward the sources. The aqueduct served until the twentieth century, when modern supply made it redundant; unlike many disused industrial structures it was never demolished, and its arcades have been absorbed into the city's green system as a linear park. The Nottolini aqueduct forms part of a wider historical system of waterworks connecting Lucca and Pisa.