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Italy’s ancient Roman Via Appia was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on Saturday, becoming the country’s 60th.
With a total length of over 800 kilometres (500 miles), the Via Appia, known as the “Queen of Roads”, is the oldest and most important of the great roads built by the Ancient Romans from 312 BC onwards.
The Via Appia revolutionized road building and soon became the most important road connecting Rome with the southern part of the peninsula.
This strategic corridor guaranteed access in all weather conditions and enabled the Roman legions to carry out their conquests quickly and unhindered.
The application for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, prepared by the Italian Ministry of Culture, was declared successful at the 46th session of the World Heritage Committee currently being held in New Delhi.
“Originally conceived as a strategic route for military conquest and the march towards the East and Asia Minor,” UNESCO said, “the Via Appia then allowed the development of the cities connected to it, new settlements emerged and promoted agricultural production and trade.”
Made up of 22 sections, the road is a collection of civil engineering works that demonstrate “the high technical expertise of Roman engineers in road building, civil engineering, infrastructure, large-scale reclamation works and a huge number of monumental constructions,” UNESCO added.
Today, the ancient Appian Way is not only a large open-air museum, the construction of which began in the 1800s, but also a vast green space where Romans and tourists can spend their leisure time cycling, hiking and visiting the monuments. The whole area is a protected archaeological park.