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Concept
Fountains in Paris
Summary
The Fountains in Paris originally provided drinking water for city residents, and now are decorative features in the city's squares and parks. Paris has more than two hundred fountains, the oldest dating back to the 16th century. It also has more than one hundred Wallace drinking fountains. Most of the fountains are the property of the municipality.
In 2017, an investigation by the cultural heritage magazine La Tribune de l'art revealed that more than half of these fountains were not functioning.
For the list of Paris fountains by arrondissement, See List of Paris fountains.
The history of fountains in Paris until the mid-19th century was the history of the city's struggle to provide clean drinking water to its growing population. The building of fountains also depended upon the law of gravity; until the introduction of mechanical pumps, the source of the water had to be higher than the fountain for the water to flow.
In the third century BC, the original inhabitants, the Parisii, took their water directly from the River Seine. By the first century BC, the Roman engineers of the town of Lutetia had built the aqueduct of Arcueil using gravity to provide water for their baths and for their public fountains.
In the Middle Ages, the Roman aqueduct of Arcueil had fallen into ruins and residents once again took their water from the Seine or from wells. By the reign of Philip II of France (1180–1223), two large monasteries existed outside the city walls north of Paris; the Abbey of Saint-Laurent, at the foot of Montmartre, and the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. These monasteries received fresh water from two aqueducts; the Abbey of Saint Laurent by lead pipes coming from the heights of Romaineville and Menilmontant, and the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champs by a masonry aqueduct coming from the summit of Belleville. In the first half of the 13th century, these two aqueducts were used to supply water to the first recorded fountains in medieval Paris, the Fontaine des Halles, the Fontaine des Innocents, and the Fontaine de Maubuée.
Official source
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