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Abstract: At the end of the sixteenth century the city of Velletri did not yet have a water system capable of delivering water to its inhabitants and the only existing fountains were located outside the city walls. Random attempts to locate the aquifers had taken place at the beginning of the century, but it was in 1581, the year in which Cardinal Alexander Farnese took possession of the Dioceses of Velletri-Ostia, that the search for water sources took a more decisive turn. However such sources were discovered only during the first years of the seventeenth century; the process was supervised by Giovanni Fontana, who was chosen to design the new hydraulic network in 1609. The undertaking made it possible to construct fountains within the city, and must be seen in correlation with the renovation of two important piazzas, the piazza di Sopra and the piazza da Basso, where ancient and new late sixteenth century roads intersect and in connection with the new lines of development that favored the center’s growth toward the east.