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Via Domitia Paved Remains
About
A sunken rectangle of massive limestone paving slabs sits below street level in the middle of Narbonne's main square — a surviving stretch of the actual road surface of the first Roman road built in Gaul. Deep wheel ruts are still cut into the stone from centuries of cart traffic. Uncovered during excavations in 1997, it lets a visitor stand on the same pavement legionaries and merchants used to cross from Italy toward Spain. By 117 CE this road had carried imperial traffic for well over two centuries.
What happened here
The surface is cambered, drained on both sides, and built to be repaired rather than to last forever. Milestones give the distance to the nearest town and the name of the emperor who last paid for resurfacing. Traffic is mostly feet and hooves; wheeled freight is slow and heavy and, in some towns, banned during daylight. Official messengers use the state relay and change horses at posting stations set roughly a day apart, which is what makes the empire governable. Everyone else walks about twenty miles a day and stops at an inn of doubtful quality. Tombs, shrines and roadside bars line the approaches to any town. Bandits are a real risk on quiet stretches and the army patrols the worst of them.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →