A Very Cool Subway Map Of The Roman Empire
One of Rome's great achievements was its system of roads that criss-crossed Europe and, as the empire grew, Northern Africa and the Middle East — including 50,000 miles of paved roads.
But given its size and diffuse nature (you can go to Rome and see the Colosseum, but it's a bit harder to fully appreciate the Via Appia) Self-described "geography and data nerd" Sasha Trubetskoy spent some time with the history books and drew up a NYC subway map style visualization of the Roman Empire's highway system — it's pretty darn cool:
[View a zoomable version here]
While many of the roads have their original names, Trubetskoy had to make up some of the names (usually based on major cities they passed through) where no original name was available, and he had to take some other creative liberties:
The biggest creative element was choosing which roads and cities to include, and which to exclude. There is no way I could include every Roman road, these are only the main ones. I tried to include cities with larger populations, or cities that were provincial capitals around the 2nd century.
But, as with most subway maps, you're not getting an exact, 1:1 recreation of the geography, but rather a concise view of a transportation system — and that's exactly what we get here for Rome.