Via Appia Antica

Historic · Appia Antica (Parco Regionale dell'Appia Antica)Rome,Italy

A Roman road still paved in its own black basalt, running for miles out of Rome between the tombs that lined its first miles.

Via Appia Antica still carries its Roman paving, and no other Roman road can be walked for hours on its original stones. Walk south and the city thins out behind you. Past the tomb of Cecilia Metella the modern surface ends and the black blocks take over, curved higher in the middle and uneven underfoot. Stone pines stand over the boundary walls, and brick tomb cores, cypresses and long green fields follow for miles. The road has never stopped being a public road: on ordinary days cars use the inner stretch, and there is no pavement to step onto. The censor Appius Claudius Caecus began it in 312 BC to move armies south, and it was later pushed on to Brindisi at the heel of Italy. Roman law forbade burial inside the city, so families bought ground along the first miles and raised tombs where every traveller would read the name. The poet Statius called it the queen of roads. Then the country around Rome emptied, because malaria made it unlivable for centuries, and the tombs were left standing in bare fields. That is why so many of them survive.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come on a Sunday or a public holiday — motor traffic is barred from the inner road on those days, and you can walk down the middle of the stones instead of the edge.
Begin at Cecilia Metella rather than at the city gate — the first stretch out of Porta San Sebastiano is walled in and busy, and the old paving only begins past her tomb.
Crouch where two parallel grooves run across a single block — they were worn by iron-tyred cart wheels, not carved on purpose, and the gap between them is the width of the carts that wore them.
The road costs nothing; only the buildings on it do — walking the stones, reading the tombs and crossing the fields is free at any hour, and the mausoleum and its enclosure are the paid part.
Keep going past the Circus of Maxentius — most people turn back at Cecilia Metella, so the road empties and the fields open out. The pines give thin shade, and there is nowhere out there to buy water.

Things to do

1
Look the roadside portraits in the eye
Beyond the third mile, several tombs carry stone panels of the people buried behind them. Couples face out at the road, shoulder to shoulder, right hands joined to show they were married. Some men have the tools of their trade cut in beside them. Stand close and read the names underneath.
2
Circle the round tomb of Cecilia Metella
Walk right around the outside of the round tomb. High on the wall, find the carved band of garlands hung between ox skulls. That carving gave the whole stretch of countryside its old name, Capo di Bove, ox head. The brick battlements above it are medieval, added when a family turned the tomb into a castle keep.
3
Walk out early into the empty fields
Start soon after sunrise, when the grass on both sides is still grey with dew. Sound carries a long way out here. You hear your own boots knocking on the stone, then sheep somewhere behind a wall, and almost nothing from the city you left. Keep walking until the last houses drop out of sight.