Roman Heritage in Italy

 Via Appia

With so much of Western Europe conquered by the Romans, the Romans needed roads to move their troops around quickly.

The Via Appia was one of the earliest and most important Roman roads.It connected Rome to Brindisi, in Apulia, in southern Italy. The road was named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 B.C. during the Samnite Wars.

It was the first long road built specifically to transport troops outside Rome The Romans built a high-quality road, with layers of cemented stone over a layer of small stones and drainage ditches on each side.The road achieved its purpose. Rome won the Second Samnite war and the Via Appia was the main factor that allowed the Romans to rapidly concentrate their forces.By the late Republic, the Romans had expanded over most of Italy and became masters of road construction..

The Via Appia began in the Roman Forum, passed through the Servian Wall at the Porta Capena,and left the city.

Monuments along the Appian Way (1^st – 5^st mile)

Porta Appia, the gate of Aurelian walls                                              Church of Domine Quo Vadis

The Catacomb of Callixtus                                                                          San Sebastiano outside the walls

Circus of Massenzio

Mausoleum of Caecilia Metella

The mausoleum was built at the third mile of the Via Appia in the years 30-20 BC.

It’s a monumental tomb erected for a Roman noblewoman. Her father was Quintus Caecilius Metellus, a consul who conquered the island of Crete. The interior of the tomb consists of a funerary chamber, occupying the whole height of the cylinder. During the Middle Ages it was trasformed into a fortress.

Roman baths of Capo di Bove

Monuments along the Appian Way (from the 5^th mile)

Mausoleum of the Orazi and Curiazi                                            Mausoleum of Casal Rotondo

Villa of the Quintilii

The Villa covers the area between Appia Antica (Ancient Appian Way) and Appia Nuova (the modern road) and it is built around a big square.
It was the largest and grandest residence of the Roman Suburbium. The original part belonged to the Quintilii brothers, consuls in 151 AD and was expanded after the Villa became imperial property under the Emperor Commodus. Commodus loved to reside in it, because of the tranquillity of the country and of the benefits of the thermal baths that were inside the Villa.

The most imposing part of the building consists of a series of rooms and the two large thermal chambers of the calidarium and the frigidarium, with windows and polychrome marbles.