Is this a Roman road?
A small oracle for the road ahead.
What counts as a Roman road?
A Roman road is one surveyed and built by the Roman state. The first of the great consular roads, the Via Appia out of Rome, was begun in 312 BC; in Britain they belong to the years after the invasion of AD 43. Estimates of the British network run to something like ten thousand miles of road of all classes, of which around two thousand miles were paved trunk route, though only a fraction of the whole is mapped with any confidence. Most of it was laid by the army, to move soldiers and supplies rather than to serve towns that already existed.
The popular test is straightness, and it is a decent one. Roman surveyors worked between fixed sighting points and drove the line through whatever lay between, which is why a Roman road takes a hill head on where a medieval road contours patiently around it. But straight is not proof: enclosure roads and turnpikes are straight too, and plenty of Roman roads bend where the ground forced it.
The reliable test is the record. This site checks your position against Itiner-e, the academic survey of the empire's road network, and tells you how far you are from the nearest mapped line.
How this works
Tap the button, allow location, and the site compares your coordinates against every Roman road mapped near you. If you are within a few metres of a line it says so. If not, it tells you how far the nearest one is and which way to look.
Your exact coordinates never leave your phone: the site downloads the road data for the square of ground around you and does the comparison in the browser. Searching by name instead sends that place name to OpenStreetMap's geocoder, and the map itself is drawn from OpenFreeMap's tiles.
Coverage is empire-wide, from Scotland to Syria, because the underlying survey is. The hand-written histories are Britain-only for now; everywhere else falls back to the survey's own record of the road.
The named roads of Britain
Britain's Roman roads mostly reach us under English names, not Roman ones. Watling Street and Ermine Street are named for Anglo-Saxon peoples, the Wæclingas and the Earningas, and were christened centuries after the last legion left by people who used the roads without knowing who built them. The Fosse Way is the half-exception: an English name built on the Latin fossa, a ditch.
- Watling Street
- Ermine Street
- Fosse Way
- Stane Street
- Akeman Street
- Dere Street
- Peddars Way
- Via Devana
- Sarn Helen
- Stanegate
- King Street
- Pye Road
- The Devil's Highway
- Ackling Dyke
- Stone Street
- Ryknild Street
- Maiden Way
- The Devil's Causeway
- High Street
- Icknield Way
- The Military Way
- Stainmore Pass road
All the roads, with maps and figures →
Which modern roads are Roman roads? →
Common questions
How do I know if I am on a Roman road?
Compare your position against a surveyed map of the network. This site does that: it checks your coordinates against the Itiner-e academic survey and tells you whether you are on the line, near it, or a long way from the nearest one.
Are Roman roads always straight?
Usually but not always. Roman surveyors worked between fixed sighting points and held a straight alignment across obstacles, which is why Roman roads take hills head on. But they bend where the ground demands it, and plenty of straight British roads are enclosure roads or turnpikes rather than Roman work.
Which modern roads follow Roman roads?
Many do. The A5 follows Watling Street from London to Shrewsbury, the A2 follows it from Dover to London, the A46 runs along the Fosse Way between Leicester and Lincoln, the A68 follows Dere Street north of Corbridge, and the B2068 in Kent follows Stone Street almost exactly.
Does this work outside Britain?
Yes. The underlying survey covers the whole empire, so the site will answer anywhere from Scotland to Syria. The hand-written histories are Britain-only for now; elsewhere you get the survey's own record of the road.