All the Roads That Lead to Rome

The Roman Empire was big on its infrastructure. Its engineers built more than 50,000 miles of roads to connect its far-flung territories to the cultural and political capital of the Mediterranean. Armies had to be able to get to the territories, and taxes and trade had to get to Rome. All measurements in the empire were based on the distance to the Milliarium Aureum, a monument in the center of the city. Thus the saying, “all roads lead to Rome.”

Designers at moovel lab, a research lab for modern transportation, decided to see how true the saying really is. They calculated 486,713 starting points from which one could get to Rome, and mapped out the route it would take to get there. And yes, it seems that it’s very easy to start out from almost anywhere in Europe and end up in Rome. If European roads were rivers, Rome would be their mountain source.

Just for fun, the team decided to see if the same were true in America. There are several cities across the U.S. named Rome—in Georgia, New York, Indiana, and other states. With the Interstate Highway System, it’s pretty easy to make any city a travel hub, although living anywhere on the West Coast makes it a pretty long trek to reach a Rome.

See more of moovel lab’s visualizations here. 

[h/t Flowing Data]

All images courtesy moovel lab