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RomeAt the sources of the Appian Way, a candidate highway for Unesco
Italy dreams of having the Appian Way listed as a world heritage site. Excavations carried out in Rome, to uncover the first meters of the roadway, have already made it possible to discover treasures.
Candidate for Unesco, the Via Appia Antica is a history book that archaeological excavations nourish indefinitely.
AFP
All roads lead to Rome, but they also depart from it: the Appian Way, strategic highway of the Roman Empire, which aspires to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the subject of research under the contemporary city. Paved strip of more than 500 kilometers built from 312 BC. AD by Claudio Appius the Blind, censor and Roman consul, the Via Appia Antica is a book of history that archaeological excavations nourish indefinitely.
It projected Rome towards Greece and the East, linking it to the port of Brindisi, on the Adriatic Sea, winding through the provinces of Lazio, Campania, Basilicata and Puglia.
To borrow it is to travel in the past: one discovers precious monuments there, such as the tomb of a consul’s daughter, Cecilia Metella, dating from the first century BC, catacombs, mausoleums, villas. We read regarding the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, but also life in the Middle Ages, with its basilicas and crypts, and even that of the 20th century, with the homes of cinema legends like Gina Lollobrigida.
Near the Circus Maximus
The construction of the Appia Regina Viarum (the “Queen of the Ways”) required Herculean work, the drilling of reliefs, the digging of canals, the construction of bridges, viaducts and dykes, but also post houses and inns to accommodate men and horses. In Rome, the Via Appia Antica began near the Circus Maximus and the sumptuous Baths of Caracalla, where the Eternal City’s heritage department summoned the press this week to support the site’s candidacy for inclusion on the list. of world heritage.
Work to locate the first hundred meters of the Via Appia route, regarding eight meters deep, began in 2018 and has unearthed remains from different eras, including a marble bust from the 2nd century AD. .-C and a strange papal square coin, minted between 690 and 730.
“The historical question at the origin of these excavations carried out in front of the Baths of Caracalla is this: where did the first Roman mile of the Appian Way pass?” explained Daniela Porro, curator at the Department of Archeology in Rome. “In the contemporary landscape, the initial route of the Appian Way has almost disappeared.”
Wide enough to cross, with sidewalks
Fragments of glass and ceramics, remains of an amphora, mosaics, revealing the various periods of the history of Rome, were also found. “If we might keep digging lower, we would find Archaic Rome and Imperial Rome, with its monuments and houses. We have reached late ancient Rome, the one that began to live in the ruins of ancient Rome,” explained Professor Daniel Manacorda, who worked with an interdisciplinary team of young archaeologists, geologists and architects.
“If we might keep digging lower, we would find Archaic Rome and Imperial Rome, with its monuments and houses.”
“Here, for example, we know that there was a xenodoche. A xénodoche was a kind of accommodation to receive the sick and pilgrims”, he underlines.
In addition to having resisted more than two millennia, the Via Appia bears witness to the ingenuity of Roman builders. When the roads were still grassy, muddy and rocky paths, they invented the modern lane, wide enough for two carts to pass, flanked by dirt pavements for pedestrians and a system of drainage to evacuate rainwater.
(AFP)
