Designer Reimagines the Roads of the Roman Empire as a Subway Map

To better comprehend the scale of the ancient Roman Empire, look at its roadways. In 125 CE, its routes stretched from northern Europe to the Middle East, and a designer has found a way to present this sprawling network in a package modern audiences are familiar with. As Creators reports, Alexandr Sasha Trubetskoy’s latest maps depict the hypothetical subway system of a 1000-year-old empire.

When designing his maps, Trubetskoy referred to geographical data from Stanford's ORBIS model, The Pelagios Project, and the Antonine Itinerary, a centuries-old series of records that document the Roman Empire's road names. The map isn’t 100 percent accurate (he took artistic license combining routes that overlapped and giving names to roads that didn’t have them), but all the most prolific roads and cities from the period are represented.

Trubetskoy is currently majoring in statistics and economics at the University of Chicago, but he enjoys making offbeat maps when he’s not studying. You can see more of his projects on his website.

[h/t Creators]

All images courtesy of Alexandr Sasha Trubetskoy.