Via Agrippa
About
Agrippa's surveyors laid this highway as part of the network radiating from Lyon, and the Trier to Cologne leg ran 147 kilometers, counted locally as 66 Gallic leagues. It entered Augusta Treverorum from the north and fed straight into the Moselle bridge and the forum. Wine, Treveran cloth and army pay moved along it, and it carried heavy traffic under Trajan in 117 CE. A century later the Porta Nigra rose astride its city entrance.
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 →