The Water Supply of Constantinople: Valens and the Aqueducts

Long before the great walls and the dome of Hagia Sophia, the survival of Constantinople depended on water. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the city's monumental water infrastructure — the aqueduct of Valens, the massive open-air cisterns like the one at Aetius, and the hundreds of underground cisterns that stored water for sieges. They discuss how Roman engineering adapted to the hilly terrain of the city's hinterland, the role of the long-distance channel from Thrace, and the logistical challenges of maintaining a water supply for a population that could exceed half a million. They also touch on the fate of these structures after the Ottoman conquest, when many cisterns were repurposed or forgotten, and how the 2023 restoration of the Valens Aqueduct brought new attention to this hidden infrastructure.

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