Aqueduct of Maintenon: An Unfinished Canal de l’Eure Aqueduct in France
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History
The Aqueduct of Maintenon is an unfinished French royal waterworks at Maintenon, France, begun in 1686 as part of the Canal de l’Eure, also called the Canal Louis XIV. Its purpose was to carry water from the Eure at Pontgouin to the château and fountains of Versailles, crossing the Eure valley within the grounds of the Château de Maintenon. The project belonged to the reign of Louis XIV, who made Versailles the centre of royal government and court life, and the aqueduct was intended as one of the canal’s monumental crossings.
The search for a water supply
Versailles expanded rapidly after 1662, and Louis XIV moved his court there in 1682. The town’s population reportedly grew tenfold, while the palace gardens demanded vast quantities of water. Their fountains consumed about 9,500 cubic metres in less than three hours. The diversion of the Bièvre and the construction of the Marly water machine failed to resolve the shortages.
Several earlier schemes were abandoned. Pierre-Paul Riquet proposed diverting the Loire in 1674, while the Francine brothers suggested taking water from the Essonne in 1678. Measurements showed that both rivers lay below Versailles and therefore could not supply it by gravity. In 1684, the mathematician and astronomer Philippe de La Hire surveyed the Eure under the direction of Louvois, Louis XIV’s minister responsible for the royal building administration. He established that the Eure at Pontgouin stood approximately 27 metres higher than Versailles.
The planned canal was to extend for roughly 80 kilometres and was expected to provide between 50,000 and 100,000 cubic metres of water each day. Louvois commissioned Vauban, the French military engineer and fortress designer, to plan the work. Vauban initially favoured a largely underground conduit because it would cost less. Louvois and Louis XIV instead preferred a combination of open canal sections and aqueducts across valleys.
Competing designs and abandonment
The Eure valley at Maintenon became a central point of disagreement. Vauban proposed an aqueduct ramp, a siphon-like arrangement of pipes that would follow the terrain across the depression. Louvois rejected this proposal on 7 February 1685. The initial royal design called for a monumental bridge more than 70 metres high, approximately 73 metres in the detailed plan. It would have carried three superimposed rows of arches above the Eure.
Vauban criticized that design as too massive, irregularly arched, and too narrow to carry the required flow effectively. He proposed a shorter and wider structure that would use less stone and masonry. In this revised scheme, the canal would cross embankments wherever possible, while a siphon of lead pipes would overcome the difference in level where the free-flowing channel stood higher than the shortened aqueduct.
Work on the aqueduct began in 1686, two years after excavation of the Canal de l’Eure had started. Soldiers made up a large part of the workforce. Construction stopped in 1688 when France entered the War of the League of Augsburg, a major European conflict fought from 1688 to 1697. The army needed the soldiers elsewhere, and the building site was left idle. Orders for the lead siphon pipes had already been placed, and the first deliveries had arrived, but the pipes were taken to Marly and the aqueduct was not resumed after the war.
The Aqueduct of Maintenon has been protected as a French historic monument since 1875. Two associated funnel structures received separate registration on 19 March 1934, preserving their connection with the abandoned water-supply scheme.
Remains
The unfinished aqueduct
Stone arcade
The surviving aqueduct is a stone canal bridge approximately 955 metres long and 28.5 metres high. It crosses the Eure and its valley within the Château de Maintenon estate. Vauban’s revised plan reduced the structure to a single tier of 47 arches. This lower arcade was the part completed, leaving a substantial unfinished bridge rather than the three-level crossing envisaged in the first royal design.
The original scheme had treated the aqueduct as one structure about 17 to 18 kilometres long, intended to cross the Larris ravine near Berchères-Saint-Germain, the Eure valley, the shallow eastern slope of the valley, and other obstacles. Above the Eure, its three rows of arches would have raised the bridge to about 73 metres. The completed lower arcade therefore represents the reduced version of a much larger planned work.
Water-control features and crossing
Funnels
Two funnel structures associated with the aqueduct are separately identified. They belonged to the planned arrangement for managing the waterway and its changes in level, alongside the proposed siphon system that was to use enclosed lead pipes where the canal could not continue as a free-flowing channel.
Gallardon road
The Gallardon road passes beneath the aqueduct, placing the surviving road crossing within the structure’s built fabric. The lower arcade and its associated features show the physical remains of the Canal de l’Eure’s interrupted passage across the Eure valley.
