roads

A recent study of the Roman road system has disproved two common views about the infrastructure of ancient Rome: that all roads lead to the capital, and that Roman engineering resulted in straight roads everywhere. The study, which used the Itiner-e digital map of the Roman road network, examined almost 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) of the Roman road system and found that several provincial cities were more favorably situated for land travel than Rome itself. The results of the analysis have also shown that the road went straight only where terrain permitted. Provincial Capitals Held the Real Crossroads The findings were published on 15 September 2026 in Nature Communications. The research analyzed the roads of the Roman Empire that were