How Roman roads transformed Europe

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. They spanned the continent, offered a conduit for soldiers and pilgrims alike, and may not have been as straight as legend suggests. Roman roads played a formative role in the development of Europe for centuries, and as Catherine Fletcher, the author of a new book, The Roads to Rome, argues, these highways also inspired the continent's leaders right up to the present day. Matt Elton spoke to Catherine to find out more.

Catherine, thank you so much for being with us today on the History Extra podcast. I'd like to start where you start in your book, which is the fact that these roads are at the same time something we're fascinated by and something that has been sort of written off as mundane in some sense. Can you talk a little bit about that seeming contradiction? Yeah, so I think that Roman roads right from the start have done two different things. So on the one hand, they have this sort of full purpose.

They're going to get people from A to B. I mean, quite importantly, they might get the Roman army. from A to B and perhaps we can come back to that. But they just do something that makes everyday life quite a lot easier for a lot of people. If you live on a road it'll help you get to market more effectively.

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