Have you ever imagined getting lost among the streets ofancient Rome? Well, now you can do it thanks to Itiner-ea sort of “Google Maps of ancient Rome” launched by a group of historians, cartographers, archaeologists and computer scientists who reconstruct 300,000 kilometers of roads of the Roman Empire, transforming your browser into a historical atlas. Just like the famous navigation service, the map shows the fastest route and related travel times, and it is even possible to choose the means of transport: on foot, by wagon, on the back of a mule or on horseback.
Considering the great level of research of the detail of the project, it is a platform certainly destined to make us review our consideration of the Roman Empire.
The project was born from a collaboration Danish-Spanish: main developers of the project are Tom Brughmans And Peter Bjerregaard Vahlstrup of theAarhus University in Denmark e Pau de Soto Canamares And Adam Pažout of theAutonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. Notably, the researchers mapped precisely more than 300,000 kilometers of Roman roadstaking into consideration not only the main communication routes, but also secondary and local roads, to achieve a level of detail never seen before.
Itiner-e therefore turns out to be very important search toolwhich combines historical and satellite cartography, and which allows us not only to calculate costs and travel times (both with regards to civil and commercial roads, but also military ones and taking into consideration different means, such as horses, carts and ships), but also of immerse ourselves in the Roman world with a completely new degree of depth.
The implications that the database will have in the historical and archaeological research they will be very relevant. By focusing on certain road sections of the empire’s road network, you will be able to understand, for example, the Why of certain choices on the place of foundation of the settlements, or even which certain goods passed through a certain point. They may be considered aspects hitherto considered marginalsignificantly improving our understanding of the Roman world.
