Ancient Rome’s Appian Way Is Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Rome’s Appian Way, an ancient highway dating to the fourth century B.C.E., has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Also known as the longarum regina viarum (“queen of long-distance roads”), the stone path stretches over 500 miles from Rome to the southern port of Brindisi. Officials added the historic road—along with 23 other properties—to UNESCO’s list at a recent meeting of the World Heritage Committee in Delhi.

The Appian Way’s story begins in 312 B.C.E., when the Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus laid its first section. (The same year, Caecus championed the city’s first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia.) Before the highway’s construction, the only roads outside Rome led to the central region of Etruria.

According to UNESCO, the road initially served as an instrument of Roman conquest: a strategically placed path on which the military could advance eastward towards Asia Minor (the peninsula now encompassed by Turkey).

The Appian Way was “one of the Romans’ greatest engineering achievements,” as the Guardian’s P.D. Smith wrote in 2014. “Marshes were drained, embankments and bridges built, and cuttings made through hills. The road itself consisted of five layers, including the basalt paving stones on top, now (where the road still exists) deeply furrowed by countless wagons. As Goethe said of the Romans, ‘These people built for eternity.’”

Eventually, the roadway became more than a tool for military conquest. The cities connected to it thrived, and new settlements emerged alongside it, “facilitating agricultural production and trade,” writes UNESCO. The sprawling highway “is a fully developed ensemble of engineering works, illustrating the advanced technical skill of Roman engineers in the construction of roads, civil engineering projects, infrastructure and sweeping land reclamation works.”

BREAKING!

New inscription on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List: Via Appia. Regina Viarum, #Italy .

https://t.co/FfOspAHOlX #46WHC pic.twitter.com/t1TFeAWALl

— UNESCO #Education #Sciences #Culture (@UNESCO) July 27, 2024

Over 2,000 years later, the road’s first ten miles remain intact inside the Appia Antica archaeological park in southern Rome. Snaking alongside the Aurelian Walls, Roman baths, amphitheaters, aqueducts and basilicas, the stone pathway leads contemporary walkers and cyclists through displays of ancient Roman history. Hidden underneath the road is a network of catacombs containing the remains of Christian converts.

Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy’s culture minister, says that the new designation acknowledges the “universal value of an extraordinary work of engineering that has been essential for centuries for commercial, social and cultural exchanges with the Mediterranean and the East,” per Reuters’ Giselda Vagnoni.

The Appian Way is Italy’s 60th property to receive World Heritage status, according to the Guardian’s Angela Giuffrida. Other protected sites include Venice and its lagoon, the historic center of Naples, the historic center of Pienza, and the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.