A plan develops ↑ all posts

Another day off in Rome. I’ve come up with a plan now for crossing Italy: I’m going to roughly follow the route of the Via Appia, the ancient Roman road which linked Rome and the port of Brindisi in the east. This was a hugely important highway, used as a military supply route and allowing Roman legions to march to the port at Brindisi in just ten days.

The Via Appia begins in the forum, right in the heart of Rome. From the end of the Via Sacra at the Colosseum the road starts heading south. What a sense of history as you walk on the 2000 year old basalt flagstones, polished smooth by travellers over the millenia. All the great figures from Roman history would have used this road, Caeser and Cicero had mansions on the Via Sacra, Sulla and Pompey would have marched their armies down the Via Appia to sail across the Aegean to conquer the middle east.