historyfilia:

Of course, there was a “longest bridge ever” during Antiquity, and a “tallest victory column”, and, why not, “the biggest monolith”. Greeks and Romans (and their neighbors) had them all, the problem is that there was not something such as Guinness World Records back then.

So, let’s see some of those records that were maybe unnoticed by their breakers (from c. 800 BC to 600 AD.)

The longest bridge: This category goes for Romans and their emperor Constantine, who built a bridge to cross the Danube riverbed. It has an overall length of 2437 m. Today no remains are left, and specialists still propose hypothesizes about its exact location. The second longest bridge was Trajan’s Bridge, with 1,135 m long (picture: an artistic reconstruction). The ruins of the castrum in one of its sides are still visible.

The highest bridge over water/ground: Romans again, they constructed the single-arched Pont d’Aël, which was an aqueduct for irrigation. It has 66 meters high over the torrent below it.

The largest canal:  The Canal of the Pharaohs, also called the Ancient Suez Canal, is the forerunner of the Suez Canal, constructed in ancient times. Its construction started around 6^th century AD, continued under Persian government but king Darius II failed to complete it. Later works made by Greeks and Romans allowed to overcome the difference in height through canal locks.

The longest walls: The longest city walls were those of Classical Athens. Their extraordinary length was due to the construction of the famous Long Walls, which connected the city directly to its ports at Piraeus and Phalerum. In 404 BC, however, the walls were dismantled after the Peloponnesian War. The reconstruction lasted until 1st century BC, when Roman general Sulla destroyed them. The overall length of the walls of Athens thus measured about 31.6 km.

The largest monoliths hewn: There are two giant building blocks in the quarry of Baalbek: an unnamed rectangular block which was only recently discovered yielding a weight of 1,242 t; and the similarly shaped Stone of the Pregnant Woman nearby weighs an estimated 1,000.12 t.

The deepest tunnel: It was the Claudius Tunnel, constructed by emperor Claudius (41–54 AD). Draining the Fucine Lake, the largest Italian inland water, 100 km east of Rome, it is widely deemed as the most ambitious Roman tunnel project as it stretched ancient technology to its limits. The 5653 m long qanat tunnel, passing under Monte Salviano, features vertical shafts up to 122 m depth