THE REMARKABLE ROMAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Something I still find remarkable is that ancient Rome had multi-storey apartment buildings thousands of years ahead of the UK and Europe, where the majority of people lived in primitive, single-storey dwellings. Called insulae, some of the Roman buildings rose to nine storeys, but more typically stood between two and five storeys. They housed the city's poor and were prone to fires and collapse, so they were not without their problems! The highest apartment was the cheapest, unlike today's penthouse suites, because it was the riskiest place to live. Augustus eventually regulated the buildings and limited their height to 21 metres.

Rome and the major cities, such as Pompeii and Herculaneum, had fresh running water supplied into the heart of the city, having travelled from miles away via the extensive system of aqueducts.

The Romans built the biggest aqueduct to provide the city of Constantinople, which ran for over two hundred miles, and was known as the Aqueduct of Valens. This was at a time when Britain still drew water with buckets from the nearest river, the very same rivers that were used as latrines!

Drinking water sourced upstream, latrines downstream; except that many towns used the same rivers! It is no wonder that beer was the main drink in medieval Britain!