Roman roads didn’t always lead to Rome
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Archaeologists studying the Roman Empire discovered that several cities were better connected by roads than Rome itself.
A team of scientists created a digital atlas of around 186,000 miles of Roman roads and analysed how well cities linked to the system. Their research, published in Nature Communications, revealed that Antioch, Ancyra (modern-day Ankara) in Turkey, Byzantium, and Corinth in Greece served as more central hubs for land travel.
The researchers found the empire’s most important land route bypassed Rome entirely, running along the North African and Levantine coasts, through Constantinople, and into France. They attribute Rome’s less central position to the geography of the Italian Peninsula, which functions as a side branch of the wider network. Ancyra and Corinth benefited from being key transportation points for Anatolia and the Peloponnese respectively.
While the study focused on roads, the team noted that Rome likely held a central position for sea and river transport due to its location in the Mediterranean. They plan to integrate data on waterways into future research to create a more complete picture of Roman transportation networks. The Roman Empire at its peak covered 2.1 million square miles across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
