This is the list of ancient architectural records consists of record-making architectural achievements of the Greco-Roman world from c. 800 BC to 600 AD.
Bridges
The highest bridge over the water or ground was the single-arched Pont d'Aël which carried irrigation water for Aosta across a deep Alpine gorge. The height of its deck over the torrent below measures 66 m.
The largest bridge by span was the Trajan's Bridge over the lower Danube. Its twenty-one timber arches spanned 50 m each from centreline to centreline. The largest pointed arch bridge by span was the Karamagara Bridge in Cappadocia with a clear span of 17 m. Constructed in the 5th or 6th century AD across a tributary of the Euphrates, the now submerged structure is one of the earliest known examples of pointed architecture in late antiquity, and may even be the oldest surviving pointed arch bridge. The largest rivers to be spanned by solid bridges were the Danube and the Rhine, the two largest European rivers west of the Eurasian Steppe. The lower Danube was crossed at least at two different crossing points (at Drobeta-Turnu Severin and at Corabia) and the middle and lower Rhine at four (at Mainz, at Neuwied, at Koblenz and at Cologne). For rivers with strong currents and to allow swift army movements, pontoon bridges were also routinely employed. Going from the distinct lack of records of solid bridges spanning larger rivers elsewhere, the Roman feat appears to be unsurpassed anywhere in the world until well into the 19th century. The longest bridge, and one of the longest of all time, was Constantine's Bridge with an overall length of 2,437 m, 1137 m of which crossed the Danube's riverbed. Pont Serme in southern France reached a length of 1,500 m, but may be better classified as an arcaded viaduct. The second longest bridge was thus the acclaimed Trajan's Bridge further upstream from Constantine's. Erected 104–105 AD by the engineer Apollodorus of Damascus for facilitating the advance of Roman troops in the Dacian Wars, it featured twenty-one spans covering a total distance of between 1,070 and 1,100 m. The longest existing Roman bridge is the sixty-two span Puente Romano at Mérida, Spain (today 790 m). The total length of all aqueduct arch bridges of the Aqua Marcia to Rome, constructed from 144 to 140 BC, amounts to 10 km.
The longest segmental arch bridge was the c. 1,100 m long Trajan's Bridge, whose wooden superstructure was supported by twenty concrete piers. The Bridge at Limyra in modern-day Turkey, consisting of twenty-six flat brick arches, features the greatest lengths of all extant masonry structures in this category (360 m). The tallest bridge was the Pont du Gard, which carried water across the Gard river to Nîmes, southern France. The 270 m long aqueduct bridge was constructed in three tiers which measure successively 20.5 m, 19.5 m and 7.4 m, adding up to a total height of 47.4 m above the water-level. When crossing deeper valleys, Roman hydraulic engineers preferred inverted siphons over bridges for reasons of relative economics; this is evident in the Gier aqueduct where seven out of nine siphons exceed the 45 m mark, reaching depths up to 123 m. The tallest road bridges were the monumental Alcántara Bridge, Spain, and the bridge at Narni, Italy, which rose above the stream-level c. 42 m and 30 m, respectively. The widest bridge was the Pergamon Bridge in Pergamon, Turkey. The structure served as a substruction for a large court in front of the Serapis Temple, allowing the waters of the Selinus river to pass unrestricted underneath. Measuring 193 m in width, the dimensions of the extant bridge are such that it is frequently mistaken for a tunnel, although the whole structure was actually erected above ground. A similar design was also executed in the Nysa Bridge which straddled the local stream on a length of 100 m, supporting a forecourt of the city theatre. By comparison, the width of a normal, free standing Roman bridge did not exceed 10 m.
The bridge with the greatest load capacity – as far as can be determined from the limited research – was the Alcántara Bridge the largest arch of which can support a load of 52 t, followed by the Ponte de Pedra (30 t), Puente Bibei (24 t) and Puente de Ponte do Lima (24 t) (all in Hispania). According to modern calculations, the Limyra Bridge, Asia Minor, can support a 30 t vehicle on one arch plus a load of 500 kp/m2 on the remaining surface of the arch. The load limit of Roman arch bridges was thus far in excess of the live loads imposed by ancient traffic.
Ratio of clear span against rise, arch rib and pier thickness: