Monday, October 23, 2017

All transit lines (?) lead to Rome

If you were to make a big Venn diagram with fans of transit maps in one big bubble and followers of ancient history in another big bubble, I’m not sure how big the intersecting space would be.  But I’m in it!  And gathering from the response to Sasha Trubetskoy’s transit-style map of the main roads of the Roman Empire, there are quite a few of us!
You can see Sasha’s original posting here, with review in CityLab here and Cameron Booth’s Transit Maps site (he gives it four stars – not an easy achievement!) here.  It’s proven so popular that he’s added a more detailed “transit map” of Roman Road in Britain (here).
Sasha notes that he had to “take some liberties” to make this work, but partially that’s a matter of combining a diagrammatic layout with a geographic one.
My only nerdy quibble: the sea connection between Brundisium and Dyrrachium,  a key link between east and west and between Italy and the Via Egnatia, should be shorter.

And yes, you can order a copy.


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