Via Appia

Via Appia, the Appian Way, is one of the earliest roads built in the Roman Republic and connects Rome to Brindisi. It became a cultural UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024.

Understand

The path of the Via Appia and of the Via Appia Traiana

It is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 BC during the Samnite Wars.

The Via Appia Antica is considered to be the "longest museum in the world". For 18 km, from the 1 Porta Capena at the Circus Maximus to 2 Frattocchie, the oldest Roman consular road, partly still with its ancient pavement, has been preserved. Then it joins the Via Appia Nuova to run as a normal state road for another 560 km to the southern Italian port of Brindisi.

While the Appian Way through Lazio and Campania has been kept in use since Roman times; the eastern section fell into obscurity, and was rediscovered in the early 20th century.

Go

“

Appia longarum regina viarum
"Appia, the queen of the long roads"

”

—a common referral to the Appian Way in its heyday, as recorded by poet Statius

• 3 Anzio. Site of the 1944 Battle of Anzio; see World War II in Europe.  
• 4 Terracina. An ancient settlement where the road meets the Tirrenic Sea.  
• 5 Sperlonga. A white medieval city.  
• 6 Benevento. An inland Campanian city.  
• 7 Gravina in Puglia.  
• 8 Taranto. Founded by Ionian Greeks, and home to 200,000 citizens.  
• 9 Brindisi. A natural harbor, and Italy's gateway to the Eastern Mediterranean.  

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Ancient travellers used to ferry across the Adriatic from Brindisium to Dyrrhachium (modern Durrës), to follow the Via Egnatia towards the second imperial capital, Constantinople.

The Grand Tour of Early Modern Europe occasionally followed the Appian Way.