Appian Traian Way

Stazio, a Latin poet, called it " Queen of roads" for the splendour of its burial monuments, the splendid patrician residences in the suburban section and for the evocative beauty of the land that it crossed. In the valley that separates the Celio from the Aventino there was once the Capena gate, today disappeared, from where the most imposing of the consular roads of the town began, the Appian Way Opened in 312 b. C. by the censor Appio Claudius, during the Sannite wars, in order to join Rome "caput mundi" with the southern provinces of the peninsula, with Africa and the East. The Appian way ran here straight -after this the name of " recto " - at first followed the line of an existing road to the Alban hills and reached the Agro Pontino. After the Appio Forum it touched the city of Terracina