Walking the Appian Way

https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/time-travel-on-romes-ancient-appian-way

In September 2021, we rented bicycles, and with a guide we’d hired in Rome for 3 days, tried to ride some of the Appian Way. There were way more walkers than riders, especially because busloads of students had come on the same day, and there was a huge wave of people on foot. The cobbles and big chunks of stone aren’t exactly smooth, and in some places, dirt single track paths had been worn down in the grass on the low banks off the roadway, on one or both sides.

Cars are limited to the south of the cafe where we rented the bikes, but there was still car traffic, and many of the drivers weren’t up for sharing the road. One started yelling at our guide, who tried to respond calmly and politely, and she said the conversation in Italian was troubling. So you could have a mix of traffic on the road, along with a variety of footing - some of it rough. Hopefully any drivers and bikers will be respectful of walkers, as we tried to be, even though some of the wandering walking teenage boys weren’t nice to us.

Many of the sights along the wall are ancient marble and brick Roman monuments to families or individuals. They stand just off to the side of the road. Several were reconstructed or re-erected during Mussolini’s fascist rule, not always with archaeological attention to historical detail. There was also a wedding going on that day at one location (there are residences and other buildings in places), and what was going to be some performance at a rebuilt ruins was having the loudspeaker sound system getting set up and tested. It wasn’t an out of the way location that day, but it was out of urban Rome.

Depending on how far south you go outside of urban Rome, there are a couple ancient catacombs (we went down in the St. Sebastian catacombs, on the guided tour) and the remains of an ancient aqueduct much farther down.

Why, do Appians walk in a certain way?

I'm in town all week.