The Romanticized Aqueduct

A photograph of the aqueduct in 1856.

The aqueduct depicted in painting by British artist W. H. Bartlett.

After a tumultuous period of the sixteenth century, there was relative calm for the Aqueduct for a while. The 19th century saw little major development for the Aqueduct, and this was around the time that it actually emerged as a popular site documented in various photographs and paintings, as seen in all of the photos on this page. Artists began to paint it in a romantic way and photograph people admiring some portions of it—showing the Aqueduct’s emergence as a grand, symbolic lieux de memoire. This was, thus, a crucial point in its history due to a very clear shift from being functional to symbolic; while it was no longer the ultimate source of water of water. And so after years of being built and rebuilt, it became a sort of cultural memento, a symbol of times and troubles bygone.  

This “period of calm” lasted under 1912, when a 50-meter portion near the Fatih Mosque was removed to allow for the construction of the mosque. While the rest of the aqueduct is today in a straight line, it actually curves today around the areas of the Fatih Mosque—and thus, this 1912 removal of its parts was important in shaping it into what it is today.