'All roads lead to Rome.' It's a medieval proverb, but it's also true: today's European roads still follow the networks of the ancient empire, stitching together our histories and continuing to inspire our imaginations.
Exploring the roads to Rome
One of the fascinating things about writing my book The Roads to Rome was the knowledge that I was following in the footsteps of millions of travellers before. From the ancient world onwards, the road network has been picked out as one of the major achievements of the Roman Empire, even while it also helped imperial control of distant provinces. As the geographer Strabo observed: ‘The Romans have provided for three things that the Greeks, on the other hand, neglected: roads, aqueducts, and sewers.’
Travellers of all sorts made their journeys on those roads. From the early medieval period we have guidebooks providing itineraries for pilgrims to Rome who want to see the sights. Some of them stick strictly to religious venues, but others also include the ancient pagan ruins. One even noted a good spot from which visitors might pause for a view of the city as they came into Rome.
The medieval proverb, ‘All roads lead to Rome’ was first recorded almost a thousand years ago in the works of a French poet, Alain de Lille. Two centuries later, it turns up in Chaucer. There was even a monument in the Roman Forum, inaugurated by the Emperor Augustus and known as the Golden Milestone. According to the ancient historian Plutarch, it marked ‘the point at which all roads ended’. Nowadays only its plinth remains, and it isn’t even clear that’s the right plinth for the monument.
There are eight roads leading in and out of Rome, still numbered from 1 (the Via Aurelia, leading north up the coast towards Genoa), then clockwise around to 8 (the Via Ostiense, leading to the port of Ostia). Further beyond, in the rest of the empire, are other important highways, not least the Via Egnatia, which ran from the Adriatic coast of what’s now Albania, to the eastern capital of the empire, Byzantium or Constantinople (now Istanbul). It wasn’t feasible in a single book to cover all of them in detail across the full historical period, so I picked out moments in time when certain roads seemed particularly significant in illustrating aspects of Roman heritage.
In the east of the empire’s footprint I also explored the Via Militaris or Diagonalis, which leads from Carnuntum (a Roman site just outside Vienna) through Serbia and Bulgaria and again to Istanbul.
The Roman theatre at Plovdiv.
There are some remarkable Roman sites to be seen here, especially in the Bulgarian splendid city of Plovdiv. Carnuntum has limited original survivals, but has been brought to life with one of the most impressive reconstructions of a Roman settlement I’ve ever seen.
A reconstruction of a Roman bathhouse at Carnuntum, outside Vienna.
Going north from Rome, in contrast, I could travel some of the old pilgrim routes, sometimes walking stretches, as I did near the medieval spa town of Viterbo. Here the ancient Via Cassia was incorporated into a Christian pilgrim route known as the Via Francigena or Road of the Franks. First documented in the year 876, it’s now an accredited European cultural route. If you have three months spare, and are feeling energetic, you can walk it in full.
A cut-out of a pilgrim greets modern-day visitors to Viterbo.
Some pilgrims stayed in quite modest accommodation, but I also visited some of the grander locations that accommodated royalty and diplomats. These included the great Certosa (Charterhouse) of Pavia, commissioned by the rulers of Milan in the fourteenth century to accommodate Carthusian monks, and still a monastery today.
The Certosa (Charterhouse) outside Pavia.
In Rome I saw the palazzo where James Stewart, the ‘Old Pretender’ to the throne of England, lived in the eighteenth century, and which many Grand Tourists surreptitiously visited, having made their way south on the Via Emilia and Via Flaminia.
The final chapters of my book, dealing with the twentieth century, explore the roads that lead to Rome from its south. The Via Appia and Via Latina run either side of a steep set of hills. During the Second World War, the Allies fought their way north up these roads, dodging artillery fire from the hills above.
The Via Appia, leading into Rome
The only previously successful conquest of Rome from the south had been during the Gothic Wars of the sixth century, led by the Byzantine general Belisarius. A millennium and a half on, newspaper reporters looked back to the history of those wars, and wondered if the Allies could match that ancient example. They couldn’t resist the headline that ‘All Roads Lead to Rome’.
Catherine Fletcher
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About the Author
Author photo credit: Steve Cross, other images copyright Catherine Fletcher
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