A Dutch engineer has reconstructed, using academic sources and historical maps, the road map that connected the Roman Empire. The result, accessible from any browser, including on a mobile phone, lets users plot routes between ancient cities and find out how many days the journey would have taken on foot or on horseback.
The tool is called OmnesViae (Omnesviae.org (source in Spanish)) and is based primarily on the Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of a Roman map that depicted the cursus publicus, the Empire's official road network.
As the western part of that document has been lost, the data for that area comes from the Antonine Itinerary, another record from the Roman period. Behind the project is René Voorburg (source in Spanish), who drew on the work of historian Richard Talbert on the Tabula (source in Spanish) and on location data from the Pleiades Project. The code and database are open-access and can be consulted on Codeberg.
How it works and what it shows
The site is designed to be used on a computer, but it also works well in a phone browser. You simply enter a starting point and a destination for the system to calculate the quickest route according to the distances given in ancient sources, and highlight it in yellow on a modern map.
