If you have enormous amounts of money, the right thing to do with it is to help other people and the world, obviously.

But very rich people will likely spend some money showing off.

And I can't help feeling that if that is going to happen, then it might be nice if things like this, came back into fashion.

In English, the word "water feature" seems almost quaint.

Implies a small fountain in a back yard or a little stream running down to a pond, some little babbling-brook diversion to break up a suburban garden.

But German translation for that is "wasserspiele," literally, "watergames."

And if you were very rich German nobility 300 years ago, watergames might include a massive hillside park, a seven-tonne, eleven-metre-high statue of Hercules, and a fountain that reaches fifty meters high.

This is the watergames of Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Germany, it's now a world heritage site.

The fountains and water features here are powered by gravity, and controlled on-demand by mechanisms in underground pipelines, some of which are centuries old.

This is the Neptune Basin, which is the lowest part of the "Baroque" water feature.

The Hercules that we see above us, he's 300 years old, and those were the first parts of the Bergpark (mountain park) to be built.

Other nobles then built the later, "Romance" water features.

In some sections, we still have pipes that are 300 years old.

However, most of them have already been replaced.

The technology behind it is still the same as it was 300 years ago.

There are no pumps here, no electricity.

It's only powered by gravity, controlled by valves that we open snd close.

By the time you see this video, the Wasserspiele will be open to the public for the summer season, but today, they are just testing.

A few lucky tourists were in the right place at the right time, but the team here didn't announce this was happening.

Except, they sort of did, cause first, there was big release of water at the top and the cascades that go half way down the hill.

And I really wasn't expecting the noise.

The rushing water brings a lot of air with it, and that's forced through the trumpets that the herald statues hold.

The noise is immense, it's a siren that for 300 years has told anyone in the park that the water games are about to begin.

The water goes through a series of stations, each a few minutes' walk apart, and at each station the water is released manually, at a certain time, one after the other.

After the cascades, there's the artificial waterfalls, and then the bridge, which leads to the colossal aqueduct, wind and spray all blowing around from the force of the water.

And the crowds of people who'll be coming to watch this summer will follow along, walking along the path, waiting for the water to be released and for each show to begin.

So I assumed that this was basically one big river with some engineering in the way.

But this was built in several parts, by several different landowners, so of course, it's more complicated than that.

And it all ends here, at the fifty-meter fountain.

The fountain is powered just by natural pressure.

We'll charge it for an hour before the Wasserspiele, slowly, because otherwise the old pipes wouldn't stand the pressure.

And then for the show, a lever is suddenly pulled, and so the fountain shoots up 50 meters in height.

The fountains are fed by two different sources.

The Barque Wasserspiele, those behind me, are fed from the Essigberg mountain.

The Romantic Wasserspiele, the lower part, they're fed by water from a disused mine tunnel.

With snowmelt and rainfall, our reservoirs fill up over the winter.

Once the water has gone through the fountains, it's gone for us.

It won't be pumped up again.

Now, I'm not saying that building things like this should be a higher priority for rich people than feeding or housing the world, or any other philanthropy, of course.

And okay, maybe not fountains, maybe some other big physical art stuff.

But I can't help feeling that if someone is going to spend huge amounts on vanity projects to show off their wealth to the world.

Why not make them spectacular, and fun, and built to last for centuries?