The incredible architecture of a fountain allows it to provide clean water or shoot water high into air for dramatic effect and it can also serve as an excellent design feature to complement your home.
Originally, fountains only served a practical purpose. Cities, towns and villages made use of nearby aqueducts or springs to provide them with drinking water as well as water where they could bathe or wash. Up until the 19th century, fountains had to be higher and closer to a water supply, such as aqueducts and reservoirs, in order to benefit from gravity which fed the fountains. Serving as an element of decoration and celebration, fountains also generated clean, fresh drinking water. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often times utilized by Romans to beautify their fountains. Muslims and Moorish landscaping designers of the Middle Ages included fountains to re-create smaller models of the gardens of paradise. The fountains found in the Gardens of Versailles were meant to show the power over nature held by King Louis XIV of France. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries browse around this web-site manufactured baroque decorative fountains to exalt the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.
Since indoor plumbing became the standard of the day for fresh, drinking water, by the end of the 19th century urban fountains were no longer needed for this purpose and they became purely ornamental. Amazing water effects and recycled water were made possible by switching the power of gravity with mechanical pumps.
Decorating city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the functions of modern-day fountains.