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Tibi Reservoir

Tibi, L'Alcoià, Alicante

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Nature · 2 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

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Tibi Reservoir

Monument · Tibi, L'Alcoià, Alicante

The Tibi dam was built by order of Philip II, with works beginning in 1580 under the direction of Juan Bautista Antonelli; after being halted with only six metres raised, they resumed nine years later and were finished in 1594. The dam, a curved arch with a 107-metre radius, reaches 46 metres in height and 65 at the crest, and once held between 4 and 5.4 million cubic metres, today around 4.3 cubic hectometres, intended for irrigating the Alicante huerta. At over 40 metres high it was, in the 16th century, the most important dam in Europe, a record not surpassed until the Enlightenment. It suffered serious damage in 1697 and did not work again until 1738. It remains, even today, one of the oldest dams in Europe still in use.

Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Rodriguillo assumed (based on copyright claims). (Public domain)

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