The Nysa Bridge is a late imperial

Roman bridge The ancient Romans were the first civilization to build large, permanent bridges. Early Roman bridges used techniques introduced by Etruscan immigrants, but the Romans improved those skills, developing and enhancing methods such as arches and ke ...

over the Cakircak stream in

Nysa Nysa may refer to: Greek Mythology * Nysa (mythology) or Nyseion, the mountainous region or mount (various traditional locations), where nymphs raised the young god Dionysus * Nysiads, nymphs of Mount Nysa who cared for and taught the infant ...

(modern

Sultanhisar Sultanhisar is a town and a small district of Aydın Province in the Aegean region of Turkey, 30 km east of the city of Aydın on the road to Denizli. History The first settlement here was the ancient city of Nysa in Asia (on the Maea ...

) in the ancient region of

Caria Caria (; from Greek: Καρία, ''Karia''; tr, Karya) was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia (Mycale) south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionians, Ionian and Dorians, Dorian Greeks colonized the west of i ...

, modern-day

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. The long substructure was the second largest of its kind in

antiquity Antiquity or Antiquities may refer to: Historical objects or periods Artifacts *Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures Eras Any period before the European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) but still within the histo ...

, after the

Pergamon Bridge The Pergamon Bridge is a Roman substruction bridge over the Selinus river (modern ''Bergama Çayı'') in the ancient city of Pergamon (today Bergama), modern-day Turkey. The wide structure, the largest of its kind in antiquity, was designed dur ...

Dating

The

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

geographer

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could see ...

(63 BC–AD 21), who lived in Nysa, mentioned a secret water conduit in the town, but it remains unclear whether he meant the existing tunnel-like bridge. An inscription at the northern wall of the tube, close to a bend after , indicates a construction date in late imperial times. It reads "Work of Praülos until this point".

Construction

The Nysa Bridge served as a substructure for the area in front of the city

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

, which lay close to the Cakircak stream. It was built as a two-level structure: the bottom vault spanned the brook. On top of it a row of arches connected the two hills that formed the urban area. The ground arch spanned the stream on a length of some , giving the bridge the appearance of a tube or a tunnel, although it was constructed entirely above ground. It consists of a single, wide

vault Vault may refer to: * Jumping, the act of propelling oneself upwards Architecture * Vault (architecture), an arched form above an enclosed space * Bank vault, a reinforced room or compartment where valuables are stored * Burial vault (enclosure ...

whose uphill mouth widens to . The overall height of its semi-circular

arch An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vaul ...

is , featuring a rise of . The vault is made of rubble stone laid in mortar, resting on a substructure of

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

stone blocks of varying size (0.3–0.9 x 1.0–1.4 m). Originally featuring a continuous vaulting, it is collapsed today between m 75 and 85, and again at the downhill exit. The remaining, isolated structure at the downstream side has often been incorrectly referred to as a bridge of its own.All data: The Nysa Bridge was the second largest bridge substruction of its kind in

, only surpassed by the nearby

. By comparison, the width of a normal, free standing Roman bridge did not exceed . In its further course, the Cakircak also ran through the city stadion, so that

naumachia The naumachia (in Latin , from the Ancient Greek /, literally "naval combat") in the Ancient Roman world referred to both the staging of naval battles as mass entertainment, and the basin or building in which this took place. Early The first ...

could be given. There are remains of two other ancient bridges both up- and downstream.

Discharge capacity

The capacity limit of the Nysa Bridge in case of

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

s has been the subject of

hydraulic Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counter ...

and

hydrological Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is calle ...

research. The

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

of the tunnel was calculated as 3.3% with a maximum discharge capacity of 290 m³/s. Exceeding this limit puts the bridge under internal pressure and damages the structure in the process. Considering that the Cakircak is long, with a

median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...

gradient of 19% and a

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

of , the following median

intervals Interval may refer to: Mathematics and physics * Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers ** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to arbitrary partially ordered sets * A statistical level of measurement * Interval est ...

were calculated, depending on the method employed: *7,500 years (Günerman method) *10,500 years (D.S.I. method) *13,000 years (Mockus method) *68,000 years (Snyder method) The study came to the conclusion that statistically every 13,500 years, a value which has been referred to as the "

arithmetic mean In mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean ( ) or arithmetic average, or just the ''mean'' or the ''average'' (when the context is clear), is the sum of a collection of numbers divided by the count of numbers in the collection. The colle ...

", floods are to be expected which would exceed the capacity of the bridge.

References

Sources

* *

External links

{{Roman bridges Roman bridges in Turkey Deck arch bridges Stone bridges in Turkey Roman Caria Tunnels in Turkey Buildings and structures in Aydın Province Arch bridges in Turkey