Roman roads weren’t always Straight. And Rome wasn’t always the hub
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An international research team digitally analyzed nearly 299,000 kilometers of Roman roads, revealing how the empire’s builders adapted to terrain while constructing their transportation network.
Researchers from Denmark’s Aarhus University and Spain’s Autonomous University of Barcelona built a digital record of Roman roads across the empire, which at its peak in 117 AD covered approximately 5.5 million square kilometers in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
They examined the roads’ shape, slope, and relationship to modern roads to understand how the system functioned. The study showed that while Roman roads tended to be straight in flat areas like Western Europe and North Africa, they followed valleys and mountain passes in more difficult terrain. Builders used considerable skill to construct roads, sometimes building bridges and tunnels, but they couldn’t radically alter the landscape as modern construction can.
Approximately 90.57% of the Roman roads had a maximum slope of less than 16%, allowing wheeled transport. Contrary to the saying “all roads lead to Rome,” the research found that Rome was not the absolute center of the empire’s land transportation network. Forty-five provincial capitals, 35 of which ranked in the top 10% for at least one measure of road network centrality, shared importance.
The team also observed a positive correlation between Roman roads and modern major roads, suggesting that the ancient routes influenced later development, though modern road density varied by region due to shifts in population, urbanization, and economic activity over the last two millennia.
