Klettenberg Park, with its lake, flower meadow and rose garden, is located on the site of a former gravel pit and is therefore significantly lower than the “Luxemburger Straße” road that runs alongside it. During the city's expansion at the beginning of the 20th century, the park was laid out in 1905 as a Rhineland-style natural garden.
In this area, the Roman long-distance road passed through the rural outskirts of the Roman city. Numerous farms on both sides of the road ensured the basic supply of the population. Like other long-distance roads in the region, the carriageway of the Via Agrippa was paved with gravel and lined on both sides by wide unpaved sand paths. Roadside ditches provided drainage.
The Via Agrippa ran through what is now the city of Cologne at an average distance of 200 metres from the Roman aqueduct. The 95.4 km long aqueduct supplied the inhabitants of Roman Cologne with 20 million litres of fresh spring water from the Eifel mountains every day. Parallel to “Luxemburger Straße” road, directly on the route of the aqueduct, runs the road “Berrenrather Straße”. There, in front of house number 436, the wall core of a pillar stump is still preserved. It once belonged to the series of arches that bridged a valley here.
It is best to stay on the road “Berrenrather Straße”, because shortly after crossing the road “Militärring”, you will see the so-called mud trap on the left-hand side. The Romans had built a settling basin here in the last section of the aqueduct before Cologne, where suspended solids in the water could settle.
