The Roman aqueduct road (small circle)

The tour follows the path of the aqueducts leading to the ancient town of Savaria, the underground canal has been excavated in several places, and now we can discover on bicycle how the citizens of the town got fresh water more than two thousand years ago.

Szombathely - Sé - Torony - Dozmat - Bucsu - Rohonc (Rechnitz) - Bozsok - Bucsu - Torony - Sé - Szombathely

Map for the tour:

https://www.bikemap.net/en/r/7164426/#11.08/47.2752/16.5317

Ancient Savaria received its fresh drinking water from the Kőszeg Hills through a pipeline. Hikers can follow the trail of the aqueduct, and near Bucsu and Rohonc (later also near Dozmat) they can visit excavated sections of the aqueduct, which is more than 2,000 years old. It is also recommended for families, as it leads along roads with little traffic.

Total length: 48 kilometres

About the Roman aqueducts

Ancient Savaria received its fresh drinking water from the Kőszeg Hills through a pipeline. Hikers can follow the trail of the aqueduct, and near Bucsu and Rohonc (later also in the outskirts of Dozmat), you can see the excavated sections of the aqueduct, which is more than 2,000 years old. It is also recommended for families, as it leads along roads with little traffic. The trail starts from the western border of Szombathely, leads through the villages in the valley of the Golden Brook and winds back through Austria.

The Roman aqueduct was presented by Beáta Várnainé Balogh, archaeological technician of the Savaria Museum in an earlier article, pointing out that it took an unparalleled feat of engineering to transport fresh water from almost 30 kilometres to the ancient city in the Kőszeg Mountains.

The design and construction of an aqueduct, or aqueduct, required a high level of expertise, as the first-century AD Roman writer Vitruvius describes in his Ten Books of Architecture. The work was often carried out by skilled architects and engineers from distant provinces. At other times, in addition to the above, the technical corps of the legions stationed there played a significant role. One of the most important and delicate operations of the design was the precise determination of the difference in level between the water intake point and the planned user end point. In addition to establishing the elevation point of the spring, the potential problems of water pressure had to be taken into account. Ultimately, the geographic environment determined the design of an aqueduct between the source and the settlement.

The more expensive high wire is still a viable option in many places (e.g. Aquincum). The lightweight, yet durable and solid building element, the arch, sometimes in several rows, allowed the bridging of greater distances and the provision of the necessary gravity for operation.

The cheaper underground line was the more common solution. Where the topography allowed a constant slope, it was used exclusively. Their construction and sizing depended on local conditions (e.g. water flow, size of the settlement to be supplied), and they were therefore constructed using different materials and techniques. In most cases, it is a masonry channel in the shape of an inverted U with a waterproofing layer (terrazzo or opus caementitium) inside.

The starting point of the Savaria aqueduct is the Boszok valley in the Kőszeg mountains. Here, in the 1970s, the waterworks workers found the mains of the pipeline several times when they were developing the water system of the municipality of Velem. The springs yield between 35 and 40 litres of water per day. At the mouth of the Sötétvölgyi stream, archaeologist Terézia Buócz has cut the Roman aqueduct in several places. The collecting canal, made of local slate rocks and covered with a flat roof, measures 40 x 35 cm. The 26 - 28 km long underground pipeline brought water to Savaria along the following route: Bozsok - Rohonc - Bucsu - Dozmat - Torony - Sé - Olad - Szombathely.

In Bozsok, during construction works, the remains of the canal were found several times and unfortunately dismantled under the western row of houses of the main north-south street of the village. In the last decades, Austrian archaeologists have excavated 81 points on the outskirts of Rohonc, allowing the reconstruction of almost 3.3 km of the canal. A change in the structure of the aqaeductus can be observed in the Austrian section.

The structure described at the starting point of the pipeline will be changed: the flat roof will be replaced by a bolted roof, and the dimensions of the canal will be increased due to the volume of water (diameter: 80 x 65 cm). The canal will cross the Hungarian border on the western side of the road Rohonc - Bozsok - Bucsu and will run alongside the road. It has also been found several times during construction works in the Bucsu area.

In the outskirts of Bucsu, during a pre-excavation led by Gábor Ilon, who was exploring the route of the new road, in 2003, it was possible to observe a section of the aqueduct for about 200 metres near the former railway station. The 40 cm wide sidewalls, embedded in mortar, enclose a 90 cm high and 72 cm wide vaulted sewer cover. A 6 cm thick terrazzo (waterproofing layer) was observed on the side walls and 14 cm on the bottom of the canal. The side walls of the conduit, built using the opus incertum technique, were integrated with the 20 cm thick substructure.

This solution allowed for the drainage of up to 1,875 litres of water per second. The Bucsu showroom, designed by architect Gábor Szabó, was built in cooperation between Betonútépítő Rt., Vas Megyei Állami Közútkezelő Kht., the Cultural Heritage Protection Office and the Vas Múzeumok Direkt igazgatósága.

The pipeline was discovered in the 1930s on the outskirts of the village of Torony. In the past decades, archaeologists (Terézia Buócz, Ottó Sosztarits) have repeatedly excavated the route of the pipeline in the Doberdo dűlő (now a housing estate) of the village of Sé, which is more or less identical in size and structure to the section visible here. In Olad, which today survives as a part of the town, and in Szombathely, it was possible to reconstruct the direction and structure of the route mainly with the help of the surviving written memoirs and records.

The architectural scale of the aqueduct and the organisation behind it can only be illustrated by a single figure: some 26,000 cubic metres of shale had to be mined, transported and installed. The water yield of the canal, if we define the population of Savaria as 100,000 people, was 345 litres per capita per day.

Read the full document here.