A forgotten resource for the Campania: the Aqueduct Carolino

When Luigi Vanvitelli was commissioned, by King Charles of Bourbon, to design a new Royal Palace, which became the core of the new political and administrative structure of the state, it was clear that this would be a great project: it was, in short, to build a new capital linked to the previous one. Therefore, from the beginning, the project of the Royal Palace included not only the Park - a necessary element in the conception of a palace that had as its model Versailles - but above all the need to build a new aqueduct for the necessary water supply that the "new city" would require. Royal Palace, Park and Aqueduct Carolino thus constitute an unicum listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Site. During its construction was concern of Vanvitelli to include, along the way, productive activities compatible with the uses of the aqueduct so as not to affect the health and the quality of drinking water. Nowadays the remains of these infrastructures, inseparable from the aqueduct itself, make the whole work a valuable historical and artistic evidence requiring proper protection and enhancement. However its features make it a structure not easy to handle. Its length, about 38 Km from the sources to the waterfall on Mount Briano, makes it as a territorial infrastructure investing skills of five towns that crosses: Airola, Bucciano, S. Agata dei Goti, Valle di Maddaloni, Caserta. This results in a diversified and partialized management of the cultural heritage, without a global project of safeguarding. It would therefore be desirable that in the near future can be found strategic synergies that make the aqueduct, with its emergencies of unquestionable value and uniqueness, one of the main elements for the promotion of the entire territory.