All roads led to Rome? Not quite, and they weren’t that straight

By the Editorial Team · Wednesday, September 16, 2026

A study led by Tom Brughmans analyzed nearly 190,000 miles of Roman roads and found that cities like Antioch, Byzantium, and Corinth were more central to land travel than Rome itself, which relied more on maritime routes. This challenges the traditional view of Rome as the primary hub, highlighting a more regionally connected empire shaped by geography and trade patterns.

A recent study challenges long-held assumptions about the connectivity and design of Roman roads, revealing that Rome itself was not the central hub of land travel across the empire as traditionally believed. Conducted by researchers led by Tom Brughmans of Aarhus University, the study examined nearly 190,000 miles of Roman roads spanning Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, using digital mapping and quantitative analysis to assess the importance and accessibility of various cities within the network.

Contrary to the common adage that “all roads lead to Rome,” the findings indicate that several other cities were better positioned as crossroads for land travel. Among these were Antioch (modern-day Turkey), Ancyra (now Ankara), Byzantium (present-day Istanbul), and Corinth (Greece). These locations functioned as key junctions facilitating travel across regions such as Gaul, the Balkans, Asia Minor, and the Levant. The study attributes this pattern primarily to geography and trade flows; while Rome was the political heart of the empire, many overland routes connecting different provinces did not pass through the city. Byzantium’s location, for example, gave it strategic control over the narrow Bosphorus strait linking Europe and Asia.

The research also emphasizes the distinct role of maritime transport for Rome’s connectivity. Situated near the Mediterranean Sea with access through the Tiber River and the port of Ostia, the city relied heavily on shipping lanes as vital arteries, complementing its road networks. Interestingly, even within Italy, Rome did not lie along what the study identifies as the most significant Roman road, which ran along the Adriatic coast from Aquileia near modern Trieste, through Ravenna, down toward Bari.

Beyond network centrality, the study tested the longstanding belief that Roman roads were exceptionally straight by modern standards. Results showed that while Romans constructed direct routes when terrain permitted, they adapted their roads to the landscape, curving around mountains and valleys rather than forcing straight paths. Modern road construction, aided by advanced machinery, tends to produce straighter routes.

Brughmans notes that revisiting the Roman road network with empirical methods could yield deeper insights into how the empire functioned regionally rather than as a single centralized system. For example, the study highlights León in northern Spain, located at a junction of key Roman routes. This position may have contributed to León’s strategic importance during the medieval Reconquista, suggesting that Roman infrastructure had a lasting influence beyond antiquity. Brughmans considers this a novel perspective on how Roman transport networks shaped historical developments long after the empire’s decline.

The study’s findings, published in Nature Communications, invite a reassessment of Roman transport and its role in the empire’s political and economic integration, challenging enduring myths with data-driven analysis of one of history’s most iconic infrastructure systems.

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