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Abstract:  The contribution follows the history of the representation of the Roman aqueducts in maps and views from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. The examples chosen can be considered to reflect the changing perception of the aqueducts – or rather their ruins – over time. From an initial arbitrary representation as monumental fragments only partly integrated into the urban fabric, there arose an increasing interest in a graphic reconstruction of individual portions and their place in a functional context. One of the results of this process – principally concerning the cartography rather than the hydraulic structures themselves – can be seen in Bufalini’s 1551 monumental map of the city, the first to be based on archeological studies, which reconstructs a completely invented section of the Acqua Vergine. As a result of its authoritativeness, Bufalini’s representation was repeated and copied for at least a generation, perpetuating the error, even though the actual course the Acqua Vergine in this section should have been well known due to the recent construction of Pope Julius III’s villa, connected to the aqueduct. In successive periods, the information and knowledge concerning the aqueducts became increasingly accurate and precise while the city was no longer portrayed in maps as a collection of individual monuments, until Piranesi’s time when the admiration for the monumental value of the remains of the aqueducts was expressed in the form of landscape rendition rather than in maps.