Via Aurelia
Roma to Pisae
The route
The road left Rome by the Porta Aurelia on the Janiculum, today's Porta San Pancrazio. It headed west to the sea at Alsium, near Ladispoli. From there it kept close to the shore: past Pyrgi, the old port of Etruscan Caere at Santa Severa, through Castrum Novum near Santa Marinella and on to Centumcellae, where Trajan built the harbour that grew into Civitavecchia.
Further north it passed Forum Aurelii (probably near Montalto di Castro) before reaching Cosa, the Latin colony of 273 BC on its hill above the lagoon at Ansedonia. The next station was Telamon at Talamone, where Roman armies destroyed a Gallic invasion in 225 BC. The surveyed line then crosses the Maremma to Populonium, the Etruscan iron-smelting town on the headland above the Gulf of Baratti.
The last stretch ran up the coast to Vada Volaterrana, the harbour of inland Volterra. From there it continued to Pisae, where the Aurelia proper ended and the road of Scaurus began.
The surveyed line
- Mapped length
- 320 km
- Mapped segments
- 15
- Line certainty
- Conjectured
Measured across every Itiner-e segment attributed to this road. A conjectured stretch is one whose course is inferred from evidence either side of it; that covers 100% of the mapped length here. This describes how precisely the line is known, not whether the road existed.
The road today
The SS1 Via Aurelia, created in 1928, carries the Roman name for nearly 700 km from Rome to Ventimiglia. Between Rome and Grosseto it is largely dual carriageway, in places sharing its course with the A12 motorway. Along the Lazio coast old and new roads are rarely far apart, though finds at Santa Marinella show the Roman paving ran a little nearer the sea, in places now under water.
North of Grosseto the fit loosens. The Variante Aurelia, an expressway of the 1980s and 1990s, takes through traffic inland of the coastal towns as far as Rosignano; the older road it replaced, now in provincial hands, keeps closer to the ancient route. In Rome the first stretch survives on its own as the Via Aurelia Antica, a narrow road running out from the Porta San Pancrazio.
Where to see it
Cosa is the place to start. The polygonal walls of the colony still ring the hilltop above Ansedonia for about a kilometre and a half, with three gates. Inside them lie the forum, the temple remains on the arx and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cosa. Below, the piers of the Portus Cosanus are among the earliest Roman harbour works known.
Around Santa Marinella several small Roman bridges of the road survive beside the modern SS1; excavated remains of Castrum Novum lie on the shore. In Rome, walk out through the Porta San Pancrazio along the Via Aurelia Antica, past the long walls of the Villa Doria Pamphili, to follow the first kilometres of the road on foot.
Common questions
Is the SS1 a Roman road?
Between Rome and Pisa it broadly follows the Via Aurelia, though bypasses north of Grosseto pull it away from the ancient line. North of Pisa it follows other Roman roads, including the Via Aemilia Scauri and the Via Julia Augusta, which later shared the Aurelia name.
Who built the Via Aurelia?
It is traditionally attributed to Gaius Aurelius Cotta, censor in 241 BC, but no ancient source states it directly. The continuation beyond Pisa was the work of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus in 109 BC.
Where does the Via Aurelia end?
The original road ended at Pisa, or perhaps at first at Cosa. By the imperial period the name covered the whole coastal route from Rome through Genoa to Arles in southern Gaul.