Via Flaminia

Stand for a moment just outside the great gate at the north end of Piazza del Popolo. Listen. Trams rattle and hum on their rails. Scooters weave past. Buses sigh at the stop. Under all of that noise, almost invisible, runs a line that Romans have travelled for more than two thousand years. You are standing at the start of the Via Flaminia, one of the great consular roads of ancient Rome.

The road takes its name from Gaius Flaminius, a Roman politician who held the office of censor. In 220 BCE he ordered a road built north from Rome. Its goal was the Adriatic coast, at the town the Romans called Ariminum, which is modern Rimini. To reach the sea, the road had to cross the spine of Italy — the Apennine mountains. That was a serious engineering challenge for the time. The road ran for roughly three hundred kilometres.

Why build it? Rome was expanding. Northern Italy was frontier land, and armies needed to move fast. A paved road meant soldiers, messengers and supplies could travel in days instead of weeks. The consular roads worked like arteries. They carried power out from the capital, and they carried trade and news back in. The Via Flaminia became the main route between Rome and the north for centuries.

Here is a detail many visitors never hear. Gaius Flaminius did not live long after his road was finished. In 217 BCE he commanded a Roman army against Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who had crossed the Alps with his troops. At Lake Trasimene, in what is now Umbria, Hannibal trapped the Romans in mist between the hills and the water. Flaminius died in the battle. His road outlived him by more than two millennia.

Now look at the gate itself. Today it is called Porta del Popolo. In ancient times it was the Porta Flaminia, the point where the road passed through the city walls built under the emperor Aurelian in the third century. The face you see now is much later. It was reworked in the Renaissance and again in the seventeenth century. The pale stone, the columns and the statues belong to papal Rome, not to the Republic of Flaminius.

Turn back toward the piazza and you will notice something else. In the centre stands a tall Egyptian obelisk. It was carved for the pharaohs and brought to Rome by Augustus, the first emperor, after he conquered Egypt. It first stood in the Circus Maximus, the great chariot-racing track. In the late sixteenth century, Pope Sixtus the Fifth had it moved here. It marked the arrival point for travellers coming in along the old northern road.

That is the second surprise. The Via Flaminia did not stop at the gate. Inside the walls it continued straight south toward the Capitoline Hill, the heart of ancient Rome. That city stretch was called the Via Lata, which means the Broad Way. Today you know it as Via del Corso, the long shopping street that runs between the twin churches on the far side of the piazza. Every shopper on the Corso is walking the line of the ancient road.

Look now at the church just beside the gate, Santa Maria del Popolo. For many pilgrims and travellers arriving from the north, this was the first church they saw in Rome. Inside, in a small side chapel, hang two paintings by Caravaggio. One shows the conversion of Saint Paul, the other the crucifixion of Saint Peter. The light inside is often dim, so give your eyes a moment to adjust before you look.

Walk out through the gate and the road changes character. Beyond Piazzale Flaminio, the modern Via Flaminia runs north as a long, straight city street. Tram tracks follow it. Apartment blocks with balconies and shuttered windows line both sides. This neighbourhood is called Flaminio, after the road. In the twentieth century it became home to sports venues built for the 1960 Rome Olympics, and later to MAXXI, the national museum of contemporary art.

Follow the road a little further and it reaches the Tiber at the Milvian Bridge, Ponte Milvio. A bridge has stood here since Roman times, carrying the Flaminia across the river. In 312, the emperor Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius near this crossing. Christian tradition links his victory to a vision of a sign in the sky. That battle helped set Rome on the path toward becoming a Christian empire. Today the bridge is a quiet footbridge, popular in the evening.

Further out, the road kept collecting history. At Prima Porta, on the northern edge of the city, archaeologists excavated a villa linked to Livia, the wife of Augustus. A famous marble statue of Augustus was found there in the nineteenth century, and it now stands in the Vatican Museums. Further still, in the Marche region, the emperor Vespasian had a tunnel cut through solid rock at the Furlo Pass so the road could run through a narrow gorge.

Augustus himself paid close attention to this road. He restored it, and an arch in his honour still stands in Rimini, marking where the Flaminia met the city on the Adriatic. So the road has a Roman gate at each end — this one, rebuilt by popes, and that one, built for an emperor. Between them lie mountains, bridges, towns and many centuries of travellers on foot, on horseback, and later in cars.

It is worth remembering that you will not see much original Roman paving here in the city. The road has been resurfaced, widened and rebuilt many times. What survives is the route itself. The line on the map has barely moved. That is the quiet power of a Roman road. The stones wear away, but the path stays, because people keep using it.

Before you move on, stand still and look north up the street. Watch the tram slide away toward the river. Notice how straight the road runs, as if someone drew it with a ruler. In a sense, someone did, more than two thousand years ago. As you walk back into the piazza, or out toward the Tiber, you are doing what Romans have always done here... simply following the Flaminia home.