#roman-roads

#roman-roads

A high-resolution 'Google Maps' for Roman roads includes nearly 300,000 kilometres of viae Romanae. It brings together fragmented data sets to show the full glory of the network that connected the empire around AD 150, when it was at its biggest. But "although the roads are one of the best-known aspects of Roman history, it's surprising how many details about them we still don't know," says historian Catherine Fletcher.

For the first time, we have a good, Empire-wide overview of almost the complete Roman road network with main and secondary roads, says archaeologist Adam Pazout of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, a co-lead author of a new study describing the research that was published on Thursday in Scientific Data. The new mapan online database dubbed Itiner-ewas compiled from several sources, including earlier databases, satellite photographs and archaeological reports.