By AD 150, the Roman road system extended for some 300,000km (more than 186,000 miles – 7.5 times the circumference of the earth). This comprehensive transport infrastructure underpinned the mobility and trade that characterised the Roman Empire. Later, it enabled the mass migrations of the early medieval period, and today much of the European and wider Mediterranean trunk-road system is built on Roman routes.
Roman roads were among the earliest archaeological monuments to be studied and mapped by antiquaries. In 1757, Charles Bertram published a manuscript, which he claimed was written by a 15th-century monk called Richard of Cirencester, that included a map of Romano-British roads. Now known to be a forgery, the ‘ancient’ map nevertheless led to the inclusion of fictitious Roman routes on early Ordnance Survey maps.
Despite centuries of study, new discoveries are being made all the time. The authors of a new Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads (https://itiner-e.org) have estimated that we only know the precise location of 2.7% of the Roman road network, while the routes of 90% are conjectural and 7.3% entirely hypothetical.
The Leek embroidery