The Appian Way - A History Lesson

Our last day in Rome was spent outside of the city itself in a place known as Appia Antica or The Appian Way. This road, built from around 312BC, was once of vital importance to the Roman Empire as it connected Rome to its many outlying towns including Naples and Puglia (about 480km away on the Adriatic Coast).Ancient Romans knew how to build things well. The large flat stones used in the original road are still intact and there is evidence of it being used extensively throughout history with wheel ruts carved into its hard stone. The road was used primarily by the military (hello Julius Caesar) but also by merchants and Christians including, historians believe, Jesus Christ and the ApostlePeter. Nowadays Romans and tourists use it primarily for recreational purposes. We had heard about the possibility of hiring bikes to traverse the first 8km of the road and it wasn’t the least bit hard to convince the boys to do it. The hardest part was convincing them that the bikes weren’t in fact mountain bikes and that they had to treat them as such. We had a great time and I highly recommend doing this if you ever find yourselves in Rome.