ALONG THE APPIAN WAY

Just outside Velletri, roughly twenty miles southeast of Rome, lie two roads whose intersection has a touch of the surreal: on the one hand, the Avenue of the Soviet Union and on the other the Appian Way, a very odd couple indeed. But if the Soviet Union is no more, the Appian Way is still going strong in its twenty-third century: in the collision between ancient and modern, it is Antiquity that survived. Over time, the Appian Way has also witnessed the rise and fall of Rome, which built the road to connect the city to points south; the barbarian invasions, the Papal State, and the unification of Italy; the construction of tombs and villages, monasteries and villas; malaria, freeways, and supermarkets. So the 'real' Appian Way is not the one built by and named after Appius Claudius Caecus ca. 312 BCE, or the road sacked by Goths, or trodden by medieval pilgrims, or traveled by motorcycle, but all of them together. Landscape has a memory and the wealth of the Appian Way lies in the manner each culture has left its mark.

Bill Travis