Constantinople's Waterworks: The Aqueduct of Valens

For over a thousand years, Constantinople's fountains ran, its baths steamed, and its cisterns stayed full — even through siege after siege. The city's water came from the hills of Thrace, carried by the Aqueduct of Valens, a stone bridge so monumental that its arches still stride across Istanbul's Atatürk Boulevard. In this episode, Lucas and Luna trace the water's journey from forested springs to the Nymphaeum of the Great Palace, and follow the engineers, emperors, and watermen who kept the system alive. Along the way they meet Valens, the emperor who built the aqueduct; the Praetorian prefects who restored it after the earthquake of 447; and the Ottoman architects who repaired it after 1453. They visit the Bozdoğan Kemeri, the Binbirdirek Cistern, and the Basilica Cistern, whose columns were recycled from ruined temples. And they uncover the strange politics of water — how emperors used public fountains to buy loyalty, and how the water thieves of Constantinople siphoned off the empire's lifeblood. A story about infrastructure, power, and survival, told through the city's veins.

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