San Paolo Fuori le Mura and The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae starting at Rome

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. San Paolo Fuori le Mura

   The name tells the story: Saint Paul outside the walls. According to tradition, Paul was beheaded on the road to Ostia, and a Christian woman buried him in her family's cemetery beside the Via Ostiense, about two kilometres from the old city wall. Constantine built a small church over the grave in the early fourth century, and by the end of that century three emperors had replaced it with a vast basilica, the largest in Rome until the new Saint Peter's. In 1823 a fire destroyed most of the building, and it was rebuilt in the nineteenth century as a faithful copy of the old one, with a forest of eighty granite columns along the nave.

   Read the complete San Paolo Fuori le Mura write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   San Paolo Fuori le Mura is where the day begins. Next is Via Appia. Regina Viarum, 78 km on.

2. 2. Via Appia. Regina Viarum

   South of the Alban Hills, the Via Appia drops onto the Pontine plain and runs dead straight for mile after mile, as if the Roman engineers had laid it with a ruler, which in a sense they did. This was the Regina Viarum, the queen of roads, begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus to link Rome with Capua, and later extended to Brindisi. Here, near Sezze Scalo and Latina, the road crossed the Pontine Marshes, a malarial swamp that defeated would-be drainers from the Romans to the popes. Travellers sometimes took a canal boat alongside the road instead, and the poet Horace complained about the mosquitoes and the frogs keeping him awake on that very journey.

   Read the complete Via Appia. Regina Viarum write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Via Appia. Regina Viarum comes up about 77 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae.

3. 3. The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae

   The queen of roads, the Romans called it: the Via Appia, begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, ran from Rome to Capua and later on to Brindisi, the gateway to Greece and the East. Near Formia, the old road comes down from the hills of Itri to the coast of the Gulf of Gaeta, and a stretch of it, with its paving stones and roadside monuments, survives in the countryside. In 2024, UNESCO listed the Via Appia as a whole, and this section between the eighty-third mile from Rome and the ancient town of Formiae is one of its pieces.

   Read the complete The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 146 km into the recorded legs you reach The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae. Next is back through Via Appia. Regina Viarum, 78 km on.

4. 4. back through Via Appia. Regina Viarum

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Via Appia. Regina Viarum write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Via Appia. Regina Viarum, late in the day. Next is San Paolo Fuori le Mura.

5. 5. San Paolo Fuori le Mura

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete San Paolo Fuori le Mura write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at San Paolo Fuori le Mura. That is the ride.