Via Appia Antica and its Regional Park site features

The Via Appia Antica is a Roman road still lying in open country on the south-east edge of Rome, and the thing to picture first is a straight, narrow ribbon of dark grey basalt running away from you to a vanishing point, with umbrella pines standing over it and brick-and-rubble tomb cores rising out of the grass on both sides, some to head height, some taller than a house.

The surface is the surprise. The paving blocks — basoli — are large, irregular polygons of hard volcanic stone, set tight against one another, worn smooth and dished in the middle and tilted at every angle after two thousand years of settling. They are nothing like cobbles: each one is roughly the size of a dinner plate or larger, and the joints between them are wide enough to catch a shoe. The road sits about as wide as a single modern traffic lane, with soft grassy verges either side.

What the eye does here is follow the line. The road is dead straight, so the pines, the tombs and the field walls all converge, and the landscape reads as a corridor rather than a view. Early and late in the day the low sun comes straight down that corridor and the basalt turns almost black with long shadows across it.

The first stretch feels different from the rest. From the Aurelian Walls at Porta San Sebastiano to the Belvedere di Cecilia Metella, high boundary walls of post-Renaissance estates close the road on both sides — the view is of masonry, ivy and the tops of umbrella pines beyond. Past the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, a massive cylindrical drum of stone, the walls fall away and the road opens into farmland that keeps going to the hills.

Scale matters to understanding it. This is not a site you stand in front of; it is 16 kilometres of road inside about 3,500 hectares of protected landscape, crossing three different comuni. In the aqueduct section the ground is open pasture under rows of tall brick arches marching across the fields, and sheep graze beneath them.

The original basolato

Between the Circus of Maxentius, the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella and the Grande Raccordo Anulare, the original Roman paving survives for long stretches.

The monumental tombs

The archaeological evidence of that stretch consists mainly of the monumental tombs set along the road.

The walled first stretch

From the Aurelian Walls at Porta San Sebastiano to the Belvedere di Cecilia Metella, the road is closed on both sides by the boundary walls of great post-Renaissance estates — the road among the vineyards described in the Nolli plan of 1748.

The catacombs of San Callisto and San Sebastiano

Some of the most important Christian catacombs lie along the first stretch.

The Villa dei Quintili

An imposing complex between the Appia Antica and the Appia Nuova.

The Parco degli Acquedotti

Between the Appia Nuova and the via Tuscolana: the great surviving arcades of the aqueducts that carried water to Rome from the nearby hills. Here, as the city puts it, as centuries ago, flocks of sheep can still be seen grazing around the imposing arches, in a rural landscape without comparison.

The valle della Caffarella

One of the park's four named components, with the road, the via Latina area and the aqueducts.

The archaeological park of the via Latina

Characterised by numerous monumental tombs preserved along the stretch of the ancient via Latina.

Boville

Near the bivio di Frattocchie, where the Appia Antica rejoins the Appia Nuova, lie the remains of the ancient Latin city of Boville.

The ex Cartiera Latina

The park headquarters and departure point for guided visits, at Via Appia Antica 42.