The Study of Roman Roads and Bridges

In the ancient world, Roman roads represented an event of exceptional political significance. Often they still constitte teh suport of the modern network, not only in Italy and in the nations overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, but also in those of the hinterland of Europe, Africa anda Asia. The viae publicae alone occupied a network of 120.000 km throughout the entire empire. The construction of such a wide network of roads, well organised and maintainedefficiently for nine centuries during which Tome was at the centre of the entire civilised world, from the cold regins overlooking the North Sea to the blazing lands of the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, represented the structural meansby which each public act was carried out and on which hundreds of thousand of people, means of trasport, goods and ideas travelled