Description
Peña Cortada Aqueduct
On the municipality of Calles there is part of a colossal site built by Roman civilization, the Peña Cortada aqueduct.
This work of hydraulic engineering is of such magnitude that combining different water conduction systems, from its origin in the Tuéjar river and until it is lost track of in the Domeño mountains, they saved great topographical features in the region of La Serranía.
In the Peña Cortada aqueduct there are two types of construction, the bridge aqueduct and the viaduct aqueduct.\
The first combines the already resolved techniques of the bridge and the honorific or triumphal arch that are used here above all to save the Rambla de Alcotas and the Barranco de la Cueva del Gato with the monumentality required by their authors to magnify the power of their empire.
In the second type of aqueduct, of free circulation by canal or "canalis structilis" that demonstrates in its section excavated in rock, the Roman technical mastery in terms of water conduction systems, sufficiently demonstrated in aqueducts of such importance as "Aqua Marcia", "Aqua Appia" and "Aqua Iulia" among many others. The knowledge of the technique was so advanced that even Vitruvius already advised covering this type of channeling to better preserve the properties of the water by vaulting them so that the sun did not reach the liquid.
The length of the remains found is 28.6 kilometres and crosses the towns of Tuéjar, Chelva, Calles and Domeño. It is in Calles where the best preserved sites are located.
The bridge of the Rambla de Alcotas, of which Escolano and Mares in 1681 were able to verify that it had six arches. However, Cavanilles a century later, in 1795, already describes it as destroyed.
The bridge of the Cueva del Gato ravine, with its three arches, is the most spectacular and best preserved of the entire aqueduct. Its total length is 36 m., while its maximum height is more than 18 meters.
Peña Cortada, the one that gives its name to the whole complex and that overwhelms with its 25 meters of vertical cut in the mountain to channel water through it.
Tunnels and canalizations, some of them recently extracted, run through the municipality in the direction of the neighboring town of Domeño and are in different states of conservation.
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