Good Example Of Essay On The Pont Du Gard

The Pont du Gard is an ancient Roman aqueduct in the south of France. The bridge is a massive arched aqueduct length of 275 m and a height of 48 m. It was built about 2,000 years ago as a part of a 50 km water pipeline, which supplied drinking water to the Roman city of Nimes.
Pont du Gard was built as a preeminent technical structure for water, and has no signs of architectural decoration, perhaps that’s why we can’t decide on the exact date of construction of the bridge and a person who projected it. Its the structure shows the practical function of arches. Bridge-aqueduct Pont du- Gard has three tiers by which the construction withstands to the impact to the present day:
The lower tier, a total length of 142m, consists of six large arches 22 meters high and 6 meters wide and equipped with cut-waters to reduce a water resistance. In 1747 Henry Pato added a new bridge to the lower tier. Now this bridge is pedestrian.
The middle tier – total length 242 m, consist of same 11 arches 20 meters high and 4 meters wide. The width of the arches of the second floor compared to the first is smaller. It allowed using the bridge as a passage for pedestrians for a long period of time.
The top tier - a total length of 275 m, with 35 smaller arches 3 meters wide and 7 meters high, there was a channel which flowed water. The channel width is 1.2 m and height is 1.8 meters with a steep descent of 0.4%, which can easily accommodate a person.
Closer to the bank of river width of arches decreases. The construction of the bridge was based on a very precise fitting stone blocks, but no mortar was used. Untooled stones, which are visible from the walls of arches, were used to hold the scaffold. Pont du Gard crosses the river at a small curve, but this phenomenon has no explanation.
Since the middle of XIV century at the bottom of arcades potholes were done (height of 1.7 meters), which allowed people to pass over the bridge. From 1696 to 1702 the potholes were partially eliminated, instead of columns the platform with a balustrade was built, which were based triangular water-cuts. But this does not solve the problem of large transport. Therefore it was decided to build a new bridge. And from 1743 to 1747 French engineer and Henri Pitot fully consolidated the foundations of arches of the second tier and built a new bridge across the Gardone, which was attached to the first level of the original Pont du Gard.
If we compare the Pont du Gard to Coliseum, for example, we will see that it has a similar construction: 80 large arches were constructed on the perimeter of the arena, and smaller arches were built up on them. Arena is surrounded by a wall in 3 tiers, and the total number of large and small arches was 240. In The Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine architectures supported the ceiling by using arches in the entire building. Also they used arch system in the interior of building. For example, building structure of Pantheon consists of a series of intersecting arches. The rest of the arches support 8 round buildings. Pantheon Dome is also supported by arches. Tomas Jefferson was inspired by Pantheon and build Rotunda of the University of Virginia, which is constructed in two size of Pantheon. So we can say that Roman engineers used widely structural advantages of arches to enclose volumes of continuous space and their building method was used by architects of next generations.