Fun fact about Roman roads: The Romans would build roads as straight as physically possible. Unlike the modern day, where we will wrap a road around the landscape to keep it relatively level, the Romans would direct their roads straight up and down hills to keep them as short as possible.
Also, on the subject of maps of Rome that look like subway maps, the Peutingeriana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana is supposedly based on a Roman original and definitely feels like a subway map, prioritizing the connections between cities rather than their correct spatial distribution.
This makes a lot of sense actually, motorized vehicles have a lot more trouble with slopes than people (and pack animals) do.
Also, in Roman times road construction had to be done entirely by hand and out of stone. Modern "pouring" of roads with asphalt or concrete was not yet a thing back then, so it makes sense to try and limit the hard work of construction as much as possible.
Now that we have electric vehicles with torque from 0 rpm, and regenerative braking, we can go back to straight roads ...
(Just the other day I was observing that zigzag roads up/down mountains were probably a consequence of engines unable to apply power at very low speeds and friction brakes.)
Ruler-straight roads make a lot of sense when you're trying to rule a vast empire where the speed of communication is the travel time of your messengers. The roads are basically both transportation and telecom infrastructure.
Among the very most famous Roman roads is the Via Aemilia (now Via Emilia), a straight-as-an-arrow road running diagonally along the edge of the mountains in Northern Italy, and connecting a string of now-famous towns: Rimini, Cesena, Forli, Imola, Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Parma, Fidenza, Piacenza. You can still bike the whole road: it's SS 9.
The "Italy" subway style map completely butchered it. For half of it, they put all the towns on an east-west line, then bent the remainder north to Piacenza. What the...? This isn't some little Roman Road: it's one of probably the top three in the world. And it's a straight line visible from space.
That's exactly what New Yorkers told Massimo Vignelli in the 70s when he redesigned the subway map for easier readability, at the expense of actually representing reality.
I get the sense that there's quite a bit of humor embedded in these works. I don't understand most of the references, but there's one that I got right away.
Click the map of Italy. Roughly in the lower-right-center, there's what looks like a gray volcano. Zoom in and read the caption:
Not an authority in Roman history but looking at the Iberian map, the Roman city of Conimbriga is not modern day Coimbra, it was around 15km away from it. It's actually Aeminium [0]
This makes me a bit suspicious of the overall quality of the maps.
I think it's the certain style and design liberties subway style maps use. For comparison, look at the general sizing or shape of Central Park in NYC subway maps [0].
Some time ago I visited some Italian cities from Germany by train. I could have done that tour with little changes 2000 years earlier. Of course I would have to get over the Limes first to enter the civilized parts of Germany in Mogontiacum. Augusta Raurica is not far off present day Basel where I spent a day. The Swiss train through the Brenner base tunnel was certainly preferable to a mule trek across dangerous mountain passes. But al the cities were there, Mediolanum, Florentia, and Roma.
What an impressive set of maps, and such work involved! Really impressive.
I was amused by the "future roads" dashed lines -- thinking about how even for an empire like that, there were unfinished things after 500-600 years.
Also, how the ends of the subway lines in Scotland, etc. were really the end of the world for them. You wouldn't want to be posted there compared to the warm sunny home of the Mediterranean.
By the time they were post guy in Scotland, those guys would have been Gauls or Brittons, with a general who had maybe been to Italy once. You may enjoy SPQR by Mary Beard if this is your sort of thing.
I’m about to be in Rome. If anyone has tips on under-rated things to see and do then I would appreciate hearing about it. I’m already interested in that road you can see from space.
Not sure if it qualifies as under-rated, but there is a night tour of the Roman forums with what's basically a documentary about roman life projected on the ruins, highlighting details and providing context. I found it great (also because it's been produced- and narrated, in the Italian version- by Piero Angela, a beloved science documentarist that has interested in science entire generations of Italians, sort of an Italian David Attenborough). I was there with a friend who's a native English speaker and she enjoyed it a lot as well.
The one referenced by SeanLuke, the via Emilia is some 300km North of Rome. (and I suspect that now what is visible from space is the highway that is practically parallel to it):
This is excellent - really conveys the scope, power and engineering prowess of Rome.
OT: For anybody interested, the original subway map (Harry Beck's for the London Underground) was constructed in his spare time; it was a massive hit with the public and his name is now printed with the map.
Just look at the pictures: I thought the tower-style fortification has stayed recognisably the same from the mid-first century to the mid-twentieth century.
The major differences: scale (13m vs. 54m), materials (wood vs. concrete), and intended use (terrestrial vs. aerial defence)
(that the need for fortification has remained current measures our moral progress over these thousands of years X-P)
Also, on the subject of maps of Rome that look like subway maps, the Peutingeriana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana is supposedly based on a Roman original and definitely feels like a subway map, prioritizing the connections between cities rather than their correct spatial distribution.