Aqueduct of Segovia

The Arevaci are known to have populated the area before it was conquered by the Romans, and the Roman troops sent to control it stayed behind to settle there; the district fell within the jurisdiction of the provincial court at Clunia. The aqueduct carried water from springs in the mountains 17 kilometres away to Segovia's fountains, public baths and private houses.

It carries no legible inscription, one having apparently stood in the attic at the top of the structure, and the date of construction could not be definitively determined without it. The building was long thought to belong to the first century AD, under the emperors Domitian, Nerva or Trajan. At the end of the twentieth century Géza Alföldy read the dedication plaque by studying the anchors that had held its now-missing bronze letters, and concluded that Domitian, who reigned from 81 to 96 AD, ordered the work, proposing 98 AD as the likeliest year of completion. Archaeological evidence published in 2016 points to a slightly later date, after 112 AD, under Trajan or at the beginning of Hadrian's reign from 117 AD.

A stretch of the arcade was destroyed by the Moors in 1072. The first reconstruction came in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs, and was led by Pedro Mesa, prior of the nearby monastery of the Jerónimos del Parral. Thirty-six arches were rebuilt, with great care taken not to change any of the original work or style.

Of the two niches high on the structure, one on each side, one is known to have held an image of Hercules, whom one of the legends of the city makes its founder; the statues now in place were set there in the sixteenth century, and while one is an image of the Virgin, the other is lost. The Virgin was replaced by a resin replica in 2019, the original having deteriorated after almost 500 years in the open, and the restored original can now be seen in the museum of Segovia's Casa de la Moneda. On 4 December, the feast of Saint Barbara, patron saint of the artillery, cadets of the military academy in the city drape the image in a flag.

The elevated section, with its complete arcade of 167 arches, is the foremost symbol of Segovia, carried on the city's coat of arms. It was declared a national monument in 1884. It went on supplying the city with water until 1973. In 1985 the aqueduct and the Old Town of Segovia were together declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Vehicles still circulated between the arches until 1992. A meticulous restoration was begun in 1992 under the architect Francisco Jurado, undertaken to secure the monument's survival after deterioration attributed chiefly to air pollution and to the erosion of the granite itself, and lasted almost eight years. Decay of the stone blocks, water leaking from the upper viaduct and pollution that cracked the granite ashlar masonry later brought the site onto the 2006 World Monuments Watch, and World Monuments Fund Spain led the project that followed with the Ministry of Culture, the regional government of Castilla y León and other local institutions.