The Roman buildings were built with a special concrete, unlike the concrete that we use in these days. That type of concrete was made from pozzolana, a dark material of volcanic dirt. Pozzolana was discovered in Puteoli, later it was found in huge amounts around Rome. The Romans mixed that material with lime in addition to some sort of larger and hard rocks, sand and some strange contents to make it harder. Concrete allowed the construction of very large, permanent structures. …show more content…
Concrete was very useful for building the Roman Empire since it was used in building the roads between cities.
Also, it was used in building castles and forts to fortify and protect them from their enemies. Concrete was a great material in building city walls and bridges on the rivers to make the movement of the people and the armies easier. It was used to erect the aqueducts to supply the houses and the public places with water, as well.
Furthermore, with the concrete, the Romans managed to build many great buildings, which managed to survive such as the Colosseum. The Colosseum was an obvious example for the use of both arches and concrete. That is because the arches made of concrete were used in the corridors and the
passages.
For the arches, although they did not invent them, the Romans used them in a wide range. The arch was one of many great ideas, which the Romans got through the vast expansion of the Roman Empire and assimilating many other cultures.
An arch is a curved structure that can hold a lot of weight. So, the Roman architects build it over windows and doors. Also, they used it to build huge structures called aqueducts that brought water from the mountains and across the plains to the city.
I mentioned that they used concrete to build bridges, but they also built it using the arches since they had a fantastic weight distribution, which allowed wider spaces to be crossed without support pillars, and many of these bridges still stand until now.
Finally, the concrete and the arches were two of the most important techniques used by the ancient Romans in developing their empire and making it the great empire that she was. Those two techniques were used in defense and building both civil and public buildings and military ones such as houses, walls, bridges, the castle, and the places of worship.