Appian Way
Rome, Italy
Founded: After 312 BCE
Size: Only 10 miles remain, not all of it lined with tombs
Number of interments: none anymore
Best time to visit: on Sundays, when the road is closed to traffic
Hours of the tomb of Cecelia Metella: Closed Mondays (except Easter Monday), Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. Open every other day from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The ticket office closes an hour before closing time.
Admission: The 7-day ticket is valid at 3 sites: the Baths of Caracalla, the Villa of the Quintilii, and the mausoleum of Caecilia Metella. Visitors 17 and under and European Union citizens 65 and over are free. European Union teachers and citizens age 18 to 24: € 3. Full price tickets are € 6.
Perhaps the most famous ancient road was Rome’s Via Appia, the Appian Way. Begun in 312 BCE by Counsul Appius Claudius, it was envisioned as an easy way for Rome to move its army southward during the Second Samnite War. The road is 14.5 feet wide, wide enough for 5 soldiers to march abreast or for two wheeled carts to pass in opposite directions.
The first Roman highway began at the Roman forum, then extended eventually to Brindisi on the Adriatic Sea, a total of almost 350 miles. Called the “Queen of Roads,” the Appian Way allowed trade with Greece, Egypt, and North Africa.
The Appian Way may be best known these days for its role in the slave revolt lead by Spartacus in 73 BCE. Once the Roman army quashed the revolt, they crucified more than 6000 slaves and lined 130 miles of the Appian Way with their bodies.
About 10 miles of the Appian Way is preserved today as the Via Appia Antica. You can bike or walk over the same stones as Julius Caesar and St. Peter. Rick Steves suggests you catch #118 bus from either the Piramide or Circo Massimo Metro stops, but I took the hop-on, hop-off Archeobus without a problem, although TripAdvisor doesn’t seem to be a fan.
On the Appian Way, one can clearly see the road base made of large volcanic stones, cemented together with softer gravel. Along the road lie two of the early Christian catacombs, St. Calixtus and St. Sebastian. Part of it is lined with Roman-era grave monuments.
Following the lead of the Etruscans, Rome prohibited burial inside the city walls. This meant that the roads out of town were lined with ever-grander monuments. Two of these tomb-lined roads were preserved in Pompeii. In Rome, along the Appian Way, only fragments remain.
One of these, the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella (Via Appia Antica 161; 39 06 7802 1465) is huge. Cecilia was daughter of Quintus Metellus Creticus, the conqueror who gave his name to Crete. She was also the daughter-in-law of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who made his money trading slaves – and was the Roman general who crushed the Spartacus slave rebellion. Crassus formed the First Triumvirate with Pompey and Julius Caesar in 60 BCE, which ended democracy in Rome.
Not much is known about Cecilia herself. Her tomb was built between 50 and 40 BCE by Crassus’s eldest son, also fabulously wealthy. Cecilia may have died young, but as Tikitaly.com points out, “her tomb is the finest surviving Roman monument on the Appian Way.”
Cecilia’s reasonably well-preserved tomb is 60 feet in diameter and was once faced with travertine marble, long since looted away for other building projects. In the Middle Ages, Pope Boniface VIII gave the mausoleum to his family, from which to collect tolls along the heavily traveled road. The Caetani family fortified it as a castle and tollbooth, adding towers and battlements.
The tomb inspired Lord Byron to daydream about Cecilia in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. JMW Turner painted the Tomb of Cecilia Metella in 1830 and the finished product hangs in London’s Tate Britain Museum. Charles Dickens visited in 1845, writing in Pictures from Italy, “Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur! We wandered out upon the Appian Way and then went on, through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls…”
Now the tomb is a museum dedicated to the family of the Roman noblewoman who had been laid to rest there. It is one of nine Rome museums/archaeological sites that can be visited using the Rome Archaeological pass.
Out beyond Cecilia Metella’s mausoleum there are fragments of other tombs lining the old road. Among them are the tombs of Emperor Gallienus, who was murdered in 268 AD, Romulus (14-year-old son of Emperor Maxentius), Seneca (the Stoic Roman philosopher), Marcus Servilius (a Roman historian, about whom not much is known), and many others. On the tomb of the family of Sextus Pompeius Justus in an inscription that tells of the grief of a father burying his young children.
Other cemeteries in Rome worth visiting:
Cemetery of the Week #8: the Protestant Cemetery of Rome
Cemetery of the Week #29: the Pantheon
Cemetery of the Week #32: the Mausoleum of Augustus
Cemetery of the Week #15: the Capuchin Catacomb
Useful links:
The National Geographic walking tour of the Appian Way
A View on Cities page on the Appian Way
Rick Steve’s advice on how to visit
The Rome Info overview on the Appian Way
Information and map of Cecelia Metella’s tomb
Or you can explore the Appian Way by bicycle!