Roman roads in Greece
The great road of Roman Greece is the Via Egnatia, driven across the Balkan peninsula in the 140s BC from the Adriatic coast to Thessalonica and eventually Byzantium. It was the land route between Rome and the east, and armies used it in both directions for six centuries. Older sacred ways, like the road from Athens to Eleusis, were absorbed into the network rather than replaced.
What to see
Sections of the Via Egnatia are visible near Kavala and in the Pindus passes, and the milestones recovered along it carry the names of the emperors who repaired the road across four centuries. Philippi, where the road passes the battlefield of 42 BC and where Paul founded his first European congregation, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the best single place to stand on it.
- Mapped segments
- 858
- Surveyed length
- 11,700 km
- Named roads
- 2
Measured from the Itiner-e survey. Segments by certainty of line: conjectured 756, certain 92, hypothetical 10. A conjectured line is one inferred from evidence either side of it, not a road whose existence is doubted.
Named roads in Greece
Roads the survey identifies by name here, with the length mapped within Greece's modern borders. Most ran further.
- Via Egnatia 548 km
- Sacred Way 70 km
What kind of roads
- Secondary Road 588 segments
- Main Road 270 segments