As I come to learn, glimpses of the Appia are few and far between, and it’s lucky this one ended up seen at all. Actually, Cerino says, archaeological sites often are reburied for preservation because their upkeep is so expensive. When a piece of the Appia was initially discovered during construction, locals feared the fast-food franchise was buying up old Roman treasures. Above us, through the glass ceiling, we can see families feasting on McNuggets. Three skeletons lie in the gutter-replicas of the bones she originally unearthed there. “The project was made on purpose so if you want to look at the road you don’t have to come into McDonald’s,” Cerino tells me. We exit the restaurant and descend a staircase to the ancient cobblestones. In what I consider an earth-shattering coincidence, Cerino just happens to be visiting to discuss future projects at the site. She introduces herself as Pamela Cerino, the archaeologist who dug out the road in 2014. When I ask a restaurant manager about the ancient cobblestones, he calls to a woman in sneakers sitting at a corner table. There lies this small offshoot of the Appia, one of the rare segments that have recently been excavated and preserved. Its last appearance in the Eternal City is beneath the McDonald’s. Then the Appia largely vanishes under asphalt for 50 miles. The last leg of this park is a woodsy uphill path. In Rome, the Appia is an 11-mile-long stretch of well-preserved archaeological park. That’s why, on a fall morning, I found myself looking down at the road from an outpost of a hamburger empire. Today, the so-called Queen of Roads has been obscured by modern Italy, but an ambitious government plan might bring it out of the shadows.īefore the crowds come, though, the Italian government first must dig out the Appia and in some cases, find it. It would later stretch hundreds of miles to the port city of Brindisi. When construction began on the Appian Way in 312 B.C., it was the first of 29 highways that fanned out from Rome. It’s not always scenic or pleasant, but it is an immersion into a slice of Italy few tourists see. In its roughly 360-mile span across the country, the Appia takes many forms: a forested dirt path, a town plaza, a highway. Now an Italian government project is under way to transform the Appian Way (Via Appia) into a pilgrimage route from buzzing Rome to nautical Brindisi, a quiet city on the heel of Italy’s boot. But its legacy has been largely neglected, buried with its stones under millennia of history. It helped inspire the saying “All roads lead to Rome,” and in Italy it is still called Regina Viarum-the Queen of Roads. The route, begun in 312 B.C., meanders out of the city and across Italy’s southern regions until it reaches the eastern port city of Brindisi. These are remnants of an offshoot of Europe’s first major highway, the Appian Way. There’s a McDonald’s on the outskirts of Rome where, after ordering a pancetta-laden Big Mac, you can peer through the glass floor and see-a few yards below-flat, gray paving stones of an ancient Roman road and twisted skeletons embedded in a two-millennia-old gutter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |