The Nottolini aqueduct is a neoclassical aqueduct built in the nineteenth century to bring water to Lucca from the hills south of the city, from the Guamo area, now in the municipality of Capannori. After eighteenth-century plans that never got off the ground, in 1822 the Duchess of Lucca, Maria Luisa of Bourbon, decided to build it and entrusted it to the royal architect Lorenzo Nottolini. Its arches are often mistaken for a Roman aqueduct.
What to see
Water from about eighteen springs of the Serra Vespaiata, the Rio San Quirico and the Rio della Valle was collected in the Guamo temple, a circular neoclassical building of the Doric order, and filtered through gravel and stones. From there the conduits run for 3.2 kilometres on a structure about 12 metres high carried on 460 brick arches, with two channels on top: Nottolini kept the spring water, destined for drinking fountains, apart from the stream water, which fed the monumental fountains. Every seventeen arches there is a buttress.
The aqueduct ends at the San Concordio temple, a circular Doric cistern built between 1823 and 1825, from which iron pipes carried the water under the San Colombano bastion to the city's fountains; Nottolini devised a movable system to protect the pipes from thermal expansion. So as not to damage the walls, he gave up the last 46 planned arches.
Visiting
Today the aqueduct no longer carries water and is protected as a monument; it is cut by the A11 motorway, built between 1928 and 1932 and widened in 1962, for which six arches were demolished. The aqueduct and the two temples can be visited along the paths of the Serchio river park; the condition of the temples should be checked.
Our editors' tip
The aqueduct is part of the Via degli Acquedotti, a waymarked route of about 23 kilometres between Pisa and Lucca across Monte Pisano, to be walked in two days and usable as a variant of the Via Francigena.
