With the development of the arch the Romans were able to create aqueducts which large amounts of water over vast distances. The need for aqueducts occurred due to the fact that the Tiber River had gotten too muddy and polluted.
To transport the water over the great distances, the Roman aqueducts worked with the use of gravity and they also had special basins between the source and the destination that would help purify the water. This system was used all over the world until the introduction of pumps. Once the water reached its destination it was put in a storage tank from where it would be distributed throughout the city by pipes. The most rich upper class people
Even though the Romans were not the first people to have a mass water system, but there systems are important because it was the first time water was available to everyone on such a mass scale.
With the fall of the Western Roman Empire these complex and ingenious water systems collapsed with no one funding the maintenance of them. Like all other roman things the aqueducts quickly fell prey to the barbarian tribes of the Roman Empire.
The reason Roman bath houses were such an architectural and engineering wonder, other than their great size, was the system that the Romans had for maintaining them. In the different parts of the bath house (that is cold and hot areas) the temperature were actually regulated by the use of underground furnaces, these also heated the floor which was made of stone slabs. The Romans were some of the first people to drain and regularly replaced the dirty water in the baths. The bath houses were also connected to the complex aqueducts meaning there was always an ample supply of water, for both bathing and for drinking. The great sanitary conditions of the bath house were major factors that helped to make the Roman Empire the cleanest until the 19th century.
The grand and magnificent public structures that the Romans left behind are the greatest monument to there once great empire. Their amphitheatres and monuments, such as the triumphal arch, were and still are great structures that were a marvel to the Romans and are still a marvel to us today.
The Roman Amphitheatre, like most buildings, was influenced greatly by the Greek civilization. These structures were generally circular and used the arch as their style of building but some were known to be built into a mountain or hillside.
The amphitheatres were quite big in size and could hold more than 50 000 people. The biggest and most famous, Roman amphitheatre is the Coliseum which was built by the Flavian emperors Vespasian and Titus. An interesting fact about the Coliseum is that it was originally built with a huge removable canopy to protect the spectators the sun.
The great monuments that the Romans leave behind show a great skill and an admiration for the accomplishments of their leader. Most Roman monuments were constructed using an arch and had details carved into them. The arches were usually very big and were a prominent feature of the town in which it was located.
The Roman style of architecture was borrowed mainly from the Greeks. The architecture of Rome did appear immediately, but came in many different stages of design and style. The first stage was the Doric stage and buildings built in this style usually had no base. Doric architecture is from before the 5th B.C. The next stage to be introduced was the Ionic and it was more complex than that of the Doric style. The next architectural style to be introduced was the Corinthian style; it began after the 5th century B.C. The Tuscan columns were the next stage to be introduced. The last stage was the Composite order that was first used in 82 AD on the arch of Titus. This stage was the most complex because it utilised the arch .