THERE ARE FEW BETTER WAYS TO GET TO KNOW A place than to explore it by bicycle. So, when I found myself with a spare day in the Italian capital, I decided to eschew the usual Roman clichés of the Colosseum, Pantheon and Vatican City—in fairness, I’d already seen them as a backpacker in the 90s—and instead visit a bike hire business I’d found on Google, within cannoli-throwing distance of the Trevi Fountain. Twenty minutes later I was rolling out the door on a Bergamont alloy gravel bike. It was a decision that led to one of my greatest two-wheeled adventures, a day following the ancient Appia Antica. It’s a ride I’d thoroughly recommend should you ever find yourself in Rome.
THE HISTORY.
Via Appia Antica, or the Appian Way, isn’t just a road. It’s a cobblestoned leviathan beginning on the southern fringes of central Rome near Porta San Sebastiano. Overseen by the influential Roman aristocrat Appius Claudius, from whom it takes its name, construction began way back in 312 B.C. with the strategic objective of
