Constructed to Final: How Historical Roman Bridges Can Nonetheless Stand up to the Weight of Fashionable Vehicles & Vehicles
A foreign traveler road-tripping throughout Europe may properly really feel a wave of trepidation earlier than driving a fully loaded modern automobile over a greater than 2,000-year-old bridge. But it surely may also be balanced out by the belowstanding that such a structure has, by definition, stood the check of time — and, for these with a grasp of the history of engineering, that its historical designers would have ensured its capacity to bear a load far heavier than any that will have crossed it in actuality. With no scientific technique of modeling stresses, as classical-history Youtuber Garrett Ryan explains in the brand new Advised in Stone video above, they only needed to construct it powerful.
Key to that powerfulness have been arches, “fabricated from heavy blocks laid over a falsework body till the important thingstone was slotted into place.” From the late first century, stonework was supplemented or changed by brick and Roman concrete, a substance much-featured right here on Open Culture.
We’ve additionally covered the Roman bridges you may nonetheless cross right now: Spain’s Puente de Alcántara (from the Arabic al-qanţarah, implying “arch”), for examinationple, which, although crossed by a quarter-million vehicles yearly, “reveals no indicators of failing”; or France’s Pont des Marchands, which “has supported a neighborhood of multi-story retailers and houses for the reason that Middle Ages.”
However the arches of the close toly 1,000 wholly or partially surviving Roman bridges haven’t accomplished all of the work by geomeattempt alone. “The load-bearing capacity of a bridge relyed each on the strongity of its abutments and the power — ‘shearing level’ — of its voussoirs,” or the stones of its arches between the important thingstone on the prime and the springers on the bottom. “Since Roman builders carved voussoirs from the strongest learnily availin a position stone, their bridges have a tendencyed to be impressively solid.” You’lln’t wish to run a freight prepare throughout the Puente de Alcántara, however 40-ton vehicles are not any problem — to say nothing of a automotive stuffed with luggage, a couple of youngsters, and even a canine or two.
Related content:
The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Nonetheless Travel Right this moment
The Mystery Closingly Solved: Why Has Roman Concrete Been So Sturdy?
The Roads of Historical Rome Visualized within the Type of Modern Submanner Maps
Roman Architecture: A Free On-line Course from Yale
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceebook.
