| The most important consular road leading out of Rome was Via Appia, the so-called “Regina Viarum” (queen of the roads), built in 312 b.C. under commission of the Censor Appius Claudius Caecus to link Rome and Capua. After the expansion of Rome towards the south of Italy, the road was repeatedly extended until it reached Brindisi in the second century b.C. becoming the communication axis between Rome and the East. The Via Appia was 365 miles (540 km) long and it was necessary a 13-14 days journey to reach the sea. Along the road there were many stations where the travellers could change the horses, take some rest and have a meal.
The plan of the road based on a surprisingly modern conception: the road should head straight for the destination and be connected to various resorts through secondary roads. It was quite difficult to build the road but the problems were overcome thanks to impressive engineering works. The Via Appia was 4 mt wide (14 roman foots) necessary to allow the contemporaneous passage in both directions and was flanked with two 1,5 mt wide dirt pavements delimited by a stone kerb. Every mile was signed by boundary stones and columns.
Approaching to the resorts the road was flanked with great patrician villas (for example Villa Quintili, the biggest of the suburban residence including many buildings, nymphaeums and an enormous perystile) and above all with funerary monuments and graves. It is very famous Cecilia Metella’s grave at the second mile, erected around 50 b.C. for the daughter of Cecilius Metellus Creticus, wife of Marcus Crassus who was the son of the well known triumvir.
It is a 11m high cylindrical tower with a diameter of 29,50 mt, covered with travertine and encircled with a marble frieze typically decorated with swags and ox’s heads. Originally it should be a tumulus and the funerary room should have a dome vault. Outside there is a battlement, part of the medieval fortification of the Counts of Tuscolo (eleventh century) that englobed Via Appia. The grave became a tower of this fortification.
From the second mile there are the most important roman catacombs: the catacombs of San Callisto - the most important Christian sepulchre in Rome where many popes and martyrs are buried, having an area of 15 hectares with a route of almost 20 km - the Jewish Catacombs and the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, close to the homonymous basilica. They were the first to be called “Catacombs” from the ancient greek word "Kata'Kymbas” that means “near the quarries”; since then the word denominates all the underground graveyards.
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