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Hidden gem3rd – 4th c. ADFree

Aqueducts of Plovdiv

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aqueduct · Plovdiv Province, Bulgaria

What it is
The Aqueducts of Plovdiv are the arches that once carried water from the Rhodope foothills into Roman Philippopolis; a partly restored stretch of the western aqueduct stands beside a boulevard in the south-west of the modern city (bg.wikipedia).
What you’ll see
What you see is a row of tall piers in opus mixtum, courses of squared stone alternating with courses of brick, with a few arches restored between them, in the central strip of Komatevsko Shose Boulevard at the Komatevo junction.
Worth the trip?
As a short stop on the way in or out of Plovdiv, yes: Roman arches standing in a city street are rare in Bulgaria. Expect a roadside monument, much of it restored, rather than a site to linger at.
Getting there & cost
The arches are at the Komatevo road junction in the south-west of Plovdiv, about 2.5 km from the centre, in the central strip of Komatevsko Shose Boulevard (bg.wikipedia; OpenStreetMap).FreeHours, tickets and parking
A row of tall piers of red brick banded with pale stone, three of them still joined by round arches, standing on a low stone wall along a grassy verge beside a road, under a blue sky with clouds.
The restored arches of the western aqueduct beside the road. · Photo: Gitanes232 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A tree-lined road seen from above, with the brick piers of the aqueduct standing in a grassy strip beside the carriageway in the middle distance and mountains on the horizon.
The aqueduct seen along the road. · Photo: Gitanes232 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Brick piers banded with pale stone carrying two round arches, behind a low stone wall, with trees around them and a car parked on the road in front.
The arches in 2008. · Photo: Avidius · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

What is there today

What you see is a row of tall piers in opus mixtum, courses of squared stone alternating with courses of brick, with a few arches restored between them, in the central strip of Komatevsko Shose Boulevard at the Komatevo junction. The western aqueduct was the more massive of the two: its piers stood on a continuous wall 4.4 m wide, set on wooden piles driven into the ground, and it ran for about 6 km (bg.wikipedia).

The water came from three spring captures on the slopes of the Rhodopes, two near Markovo and one near Kuklen. From them a pipeline of clay pipes and two aqueducts on arches met around Komatevo and ran on to the city side by side, 30–40 m apart. In the city the water ran in clay pipes under the streets to public fountains, with lead branches to houses; the whole system is estimated to have delivered about 43,000 m³ a day (bg.wikipedia). bg.wikipedia calls the aqueducts of Philippopolis the only structures of their kind found in Bulgaria. The base of a pier near the stadium in the city centre is thought to belong to the western aqueduct (bg.wikipedia; en.wikipedia).

Is it worth the trip?

As a short stop on the way in or out of Plovdiv, yes: Roman arches standing in a city street are rare in Bulgaria. Expect a roadside monument, much of it restored, rather than a site to linger at.

Getting there

The arches are at the Komatevo road junction in the south-west of Plovdiv, about 2.5 km from the centre, in the central strip of Komatevsko Shose Boulevard (bg.wikipedia; OpenStreetMap). A bus stop is mapped about 80 m away and a car park about 270 m away (OpenStreetMap). The arches stand in the open beside the road.

Visiting details

Tickets
Free
Parking
A car park is mapped about 270 m away (OSM way/574762729); the nearest bus stop is about 80 m away (OpenStreetMap).

History

No source in hand dates the building of the aqueducts. An aqueduct crossed the area of the stadium in the 4th century, and the remains of its pier there are thought to be part of the western aqueduct (en and bg.wikipedia). The three pipelines are thought to have met in a distribution tank on the western slopes of Dzhendem Tepe, apparently destroyed when the modern tunnel was built (bg.wikipedia).

Nearby

  • A small semicircular auditorium of stone seats rising in steps round a paved orchestra floor of large worn marble slabs, with a metal railing and a road bridge above the top row.

    Photo: Gitanes232 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    3 km · theatre · Plovdiv Province

    Odeon of Philippopolis

    The odeon has all the parts of a covered theatre: a stage building, an orchestra and tiered seating.

  • A wide panorama of the whole Roman theatre from the top of the seating, the marble rows curving round a semicircular stage floor towards a two-storey columned stage building, with a white house on the hill to the left and distant mountains under a clear sky.

    Photo: Община Пловдив · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    3 km · city · Plovdiv Province

    Philippopolis – Plovdiv

    The stops each have their own page: the Roman theatre, set into the hillside of the Old Town and one of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere; the stadium, whose northern curved end has been partly restored on Roman Stadium Square; the odeon, the council house of the Roman city, which also served as a theatre; the Small Basilica, an early Christian church found during building work in 1988; and the Eirene Residence, a 3rd-century house with 160 m² of mosaic floors in the underpass beneath Tsar Boris III Boulevard (en.wikipedia).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Wikidata Q20500960CC0
Vici.org 11777CC BY-SA (text), CC0 (metadata)
OpenStreetMap way/490364144ODbL
Wikipedia (bg) — Водоснабдяване на ФилипополCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Stadium of PhilippopolisCC BY-SA 4.0