A WALK DOWN THE APPIAN WAY THE SUBURBAN AREA The roads built by the Romans throughout the ancient world, represented a political event of universal importance. Still nowadays they constitut the basis of the current transport system. Such a wide, well organized and well-working travel system was the support upon which milion of people, trades and ideas have traveled. It responded to those principles of order aimed to the public convenience which distinguished the ancient Roman: in his concept, the roads were moles necessariae (essential works) which he proudly counterposed to the otiosa et stulta ostentatio pyramidarum (the fruitless and foolish ostentation of pyramids) and to the inertia sed fama celebrata opera Graecorum (the Greeks works, famous but useless). In the structure of Roman roads the three fundamental principles of Vitruvius for the architecture can be found: firmitas, utilitas, venustas (robustness, usefulness, beauty). The most ancient roads radiate from Rome towards Lazio, Etruria and Sabina. The later roads are those identified by the name of the magistrate who built them: censors, consules and praetors. They scan the challenges of the great expansion of the Roman army and the conquest of the central Italy between the end of IV century and the whole III century b.C., whilst in the II century, the strenghtening of the already existing roads and the development of those northwards and southwards of the peninsula, ratified the definitive submission of the whole ancient Italy to the Roman order. The first road which started this impressive undertaking was the Appian way , built by the censor Appius Claudius in 312 b.C. which extended through swamps and mountains of the Tyrrhenian side until Capua. Once the Sannitian were the defeated, the road was lenghtened to Benevento short after the 268 b.C. and then to Venosa, Taranto and with the submission of Messapia and Salento, before 191 b.C., it reached Brindisi, the forefront to the Roman conquests in the East. After the lenghten of the Appian way from Capua to Brindisi, in 132 b.C., another road was built going to Reggio Calabria, the Popilia way , started by T. Annius which made build the namesake roads in the Val Padana. This road went through Sala Consilina, Morano Calabro, Cosenza and Vibo Valentia. The basalt paving of the roads which developed from II-I century b.C., is typical of central-Thyrrenian Italy, where this material is easily achieved. Elsewhere different materials were used depending of their avalaibility, as for example the limestone in the Appennine regions and where the transportation costs would have been excessive, the terrenae ) or beated flood wastes and gravel (viae glareae stratae ). The pavement was the most striking part of the road but also very impressive were all those works aimed to ensure its full stability especially if the terrain was unstable and needed deep 1 foundations. When a road was built, first of all were the pattern and the width to be defined by marking two parallel grooves as the edges. Along them, were put the blocks containing foundations and paving (crepidines ); in their interior a moat was digged about 45-60 cm and more unitl the solid terrain was reached; the grave was then alternately filled with solid or well-beated material, as big stones (statumen) , necessary if the terrain was not compact and then layers of debris and crocks (rudus ) within layers of lighter material as sand or pozzolanic ashes in order to make it even; sometimes it was mixed with lime mortar to achieve a good solidification. Above all on a bed of fine material (nucleus ), the debris or the paving polygons were packed (summum dorsum ). The signage was often a road completion: the milestones, put at a mile distance with each other (1478 m), signaled the distance to Rome or to some other powerful city along the road and often the name of the magistrate or emperor which built or renewed the road. A custom perhaps adopted from eastern practice, spreaded out throughout the Roman world from II century b.C.: the roads built by C. Gracchus, tribune in 123b.C:, had all milestones made by rocky columns. The Appian way is the best preserved among the big Roman roads and above all it is the first road whose name is due not to its function (the Salaria “salt road”) or to the place it goes to (Via Praenestina, Via Tiburtina ), but to the one who built it. The reasons for its construction were purely strategic and economical, established by the need to quickly move the army and to control the Terracina sea, to allow for further contacts with the newborn colony of Suessa Aurunca and to warrant for the trade with the south, especially with the fertile and rich Campania region. Since IX century, many lands belonging to the church were gradually ceded first for enfiteusis and later to some Roman families as feuds. In that period the counts of Tuscolo used the complex of the tomb of Cecilia Metella to settle a new fortified nucleus and other Roman families. The first segment of Appian way was occupied during XVI-XVII century by powerful families became owners of wide lands: among the various lineages were the Torlonia, Caffarelli, Giustiniani and Boncompagni-Ludovisi; they all kept to exploit the terrains for agricultural and sheep-farming activities. From XIV to XVII century the road became partially disused, its monuments were progressively stripped and the material reused for new buildings. Just during the Renaissance began to develop in Rome the first antiquary interests which soon involved the Appian way, regina viarum, and its monumental furniture. Raffaello Sanzio and Antonio da Sangallo complained about the scarce attention and the vandalisms perpetrated and attempted to rielaborate an hypotetical reconstruction. The dispossession of a land stripe corresponding to the ancient Appian way at the beginning of 1800s and the repairing of the ancient consular way made by the Piedmontese archaeologist 2 Luigi Canina on the will of pope Pius IX, are the first attempts of a long and complex path which led to the constitution of the “Parco Regionale Suburbano dell’Appia Antica”, in 1988. It is a protected area which extends for the first 16Km of the Appian way crossed by the Porta S. Sebastiano, the Mura Aureliane at the crossing with Appia Nuova alle Frattocchie, within the municipality of Roma, Ciampino and Marino. In the Park can be found also the Caffarella valley, the archaeological complex of the tombs of via Latina and the Parco degli Acquedotti next to via Tuscolana. The Appian way before the Mura Aureliane were built, started its first mile from Servianus fence and more precisely from the ancient Capena gateway at the southern edge of Circo Massimo and it was delimited nothwards by the Porta San Sebastiano. When, during the imperial age, the city walls were expanded by the built of Aurelian walls, the Appian way came out of the city, going through the porta Appia or S. Sebastiano; in its interior, the municipality settled the Museo delle Mura which allow for a visit of the inner side. Almost immediately, the first tombs started to be built along the road: at the beginning they were chamber-like, as those of the Scipios, then, at the end of the II century b.C., as the single funerary monuments practice took place, the road became gradually its current appearence: an almost continuos double line made of tombs of every shape and period, whose inscriptions invite the visitor to stop, read and remember. Names of very ancient families are mixed with those belonging to different classes, races, cultures and religions. We can admire whealthy tombs as that of Scipios, the tomb of Cecilia Metella and the colombarium of the Augustus liberti. This tradition was followed by christians too, which made here their most famous catacombs. From II a.C., many christians place of worship rose around the cult of apostles in the cymiterium ad catacumbas in the III mile by the Basilica of San Sebastiano where for a certain time, during persecutions, the remains of Peter and Paul were placed, once removed from their original place. The cemeteries hence became, since the late antique and at least until the IX a.C., veneration places and pilgrimage destination. Porta San Sebastiano : the gateway is the best preserved among those facing the Aurelian walls. Its original name was Porta Appia, according to the use. During middle age it was called Porta S. Sebastiano because it carried to the catacombs of that martyr. The current appearence is due to the last interventions made by Belisarius and Narses during the Rome siege in the Gothic war (536 a.C.). The gateway is characterised by a double-arched opening surmounted by bow windows and two semi-cylindrical towers After a later restoration, the towers were enlarged, increased, and linked, through two parallel walls, to the preexisting Arch of Drusus. 3 In AD 401-402 Emperor Honorius reshaped the gate with a single fornix and a higher attic with two rows of six bow windows each; it was also provided with an uncovered chemin de ronde with merlons. The bases of the towers were incorporated within two square-plan platforms, faced with marble. A later modification yielded the gate's present form, in which a floor has been added to the whole structure, towers included. In its interior there is the headquarter of the Museum of Roman walls whose setting, inaugurated in 1990, spreads on the first and second floor of the gateway. In the first part of the ancient section, the history of city fortifications is displayed: from the ancient ones of Royal and Republican age dating back to VI and IV b.C.