\u201cCool and tasty waters\u201d: managing Naples\u2019s water supply, c. 1500\u2013c. 1750

David Gentilcore

doi:10.1007/s12685-019-00234-3

Abstract

Although Naples was one of Europe’s largest cities (after London and Paris), studies of the management of its water supply during the early modern period are sorely lacking, despite growing interest in the subject at both an Italian and European level. Naples was perhaps unique in relying on a vast and tortuous underground network of reservoirs, cisterns, channels and conduits, accessed by well shafts, all fed by an ancient aqueduct. The present study outlines and evaluates the Neapolitan water supply as it existed in the period, analysing the archival records of the municipal tribunal responsible for the city’s infrastructure, the ‘Tribunale della Fortificazione, Acqua e Mattonata’, and its various ‘Appuntamenti’ (proposals), ‘Conclusioni’ (decisions) and edicts. This is interwoven with reference to pertinent printed accounts, from contemporary guide books to medical regimens and health manuals. We examine both water quantity, in terms of availability and accessibility (by looking at the structure and its management, and the technicians responsible for its maintenance) and water quality (by looking at contemporary attitudes and perceptions). In the process we are able to question the widespread view of early modern Naples as chaotic and uncontrolled, governed by a weak public authority, as well as widely held assumptions about the “inertia” of the pre-modern hydro-social system more generally.

Highlights

In his ten-volume history of Naples, published in the mid-eighteenth century, the abbé Placido Troyli gave water pride of place, “the abundance of waters being the thing most necessary to a city’s fame” (Troyli 1747–54; vol 4, book 2, p. 60)
A recent survey history suggests that in the age of ‘hydro-precarity’, urban water politics was shaped by “similar political economic alliances deploying water services technologies to make the cities of their eras more comfortable for themselves”
Corporatist political elite relied on the services of a “technocratic elite of engineers”, even if this was not in the interests of a broader public good, a concept which did not yet exist (Staddon et al 2017, pp. 84–85)

Summary

Introduction

In his ten-volume history of Naples, published in the mid-eighteenth century, the abbé Placido Troyli gave water pride of place, “the abundance of waters being the thing most necessary to a city’s fame” (Troyli 1747–54; vol 4, book 2, p. 60). In his ten-volume history of Naples, published in the mid-eighteenth century, the abbé Placido Troyli gave water pride of place, “the abundance of waters being the thing most necessary to a city’s fame” He sought to demonstrate “how Naples in this matter exceeds all the other cities of Italy”. Troyli described how, as its waters entered the city, they were divided into different underground “reservoirs and cisterns”, called formali, for all the city’s residences

Gentilcore

Concluding remarks