Roman roads weren’t always straight, new map reveals
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Tom Brughmans at Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues digitally reconstructed nearly 300,000 kilometres of Roman roads across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia to examine their structure and dispel common beliefs about their straightness.
The team combined topographic mapping, satellite imagery, and historical sources to create a detailed map of the road network as it existed in AD 150, finding that while many roads were straight, this was largely dictated by the landscape.
In lowland regions of western Europe and North Africa, Roman roads maintained straighter paths, but in mountainous areas they curved more than modern roads due to technological limitations. The researchers also determined that approximately 90 percent of Roman roads were built with a gentle enough slope to accommodate animal-drawn carts and wagons, even through challenging terrain like the Alps, indicating a widespread effort to ensure overland travel throughout the empire.
Contrary to the saying “all roads lead to Rome”, the study showed that provincial capitals functioned as important hubs, managing communication within their regions. Brughmans and his team observed that some later cultures maintained Roman routes while others diverged, with factors ranging from the industrial revolution to local decisions influencing road infrastructure.
Ray Laurence at Macquarie University in Australia noted the study’s limitation of not fully accounting for the 600-year period over which the network developed, but suggested the work reveals how the Romans influenced the future geography of Europe.
