On autumn Sundays it becomes a gorge for bicycles and Roman families looking for a good spot to have a picnic. During the week, however, there is hardly anyone. The Via Appia Antigua, the first section of the Via Appia, is one of the unknown treasures for tourists coming to the Italian capital for the first time, busy with the Colosseum or Saint Peter's Square. But its wonders have nothing to envy to the treasures of the center of Rome: it is the initial section of one of the most important roads of the Roman Empire, the so-called regina viarum, the queen of the roads, as the poet Stazio baptized it, that now Italy wants to revive it by putting it on the UNESCO World Heritage List with the hope that it will be recognized in 2024.
"The Appia was the great improvement of the Roman communication system and in some way it is a monument of this civilization that has survived to this day, and for this reason it deserves to be on the list", highlights the archaeologist Angela Ferroni, the head of the Ministry of Culture that is in charge of the candidacy. "Normally it is the town halls or the regions that promote UNESCO heritage, but this is the first time that we have done it as a country," she explains, assuring that with this goal they want to make it known to tourism as well. The project, to which they have dedicated more than 20 million euros, aims to restore the route and revalue the landscape that surrounds the path, of more than 1,200 kilometres, between tombs and archaeological monuments.
The Via Appia was born in 312 B.C. thanks to Claudius Appius the Blind, Roman censor, consul and orator, a patrician who was the builder of the first Roman aqueduct and the initial section of the road, which he named after him, up to Capua. His feat had great merit: the patrician had progressively lost his sight and decided that, in order to check if the basalt stones had been placed according to his instructions, he would walk a part of it himself, barefoot.
As it was projected, the Appia was a tool of military domination that allowed the advance of the troops. After the conquest of the southern regions, the road was extended to Brindisi, becoming an extraordinary vehicle of commercial communication, of military domination - it allowed the troops to move more quickly - and cultural, since the influence of the eastern Mediterranean soaked Rome through its cobblestones.
Later, in 109 AD, Emperor Trajan ordered the construction of a new road along the coast between Benevento and Brindisi to speed up the journey, a new route that was baptized with the name of Appia Traiana and that is included in the project that the ministry Italian presents Unesco. As the Roman Empire began to collapse, the Appia fell out of use, but it was not abandoned. "Medieval crypts and basilicas were built around it, and we must remember that when first the crusaders and then the pilgrims went to the Holy Land, they traveled the Appia Traiana," Ferroni emphasizes.
The fascination for the Appia was so great that, in its initial Roman section, it became a residential destination for great stars of Italian cinema, as Simone Quilici, director of the Ancient Appia Archaeological Park, recalls. “It was built in an exercise of speculation in the fifties. Sophia Loren had a house here, and today she still lives nearby Gina Lollobrigida ”, she says in one of the mansions bought by the Ministry of Culture to recover some baths from the 2nd century AD. One of the most recent residents is Silvio Berlusconi, who, when he left the mythical Palazzo Grazioli – which was his Roman residence for 25 years, the scene of summits and his “elegant dinners” – decided to move to the sumptuous villa that he had bought from the director film Franco Zeffirelli.
