All Hail the "Queen of the Roads"

Celebrating the Roman Via Appia Antica, UNESCO's most recent addition to the roster of World Heritage Sites, in vintage picture postcards

As mentioned in the posting on the trip to Baalbek, UNESCO has recently elevated the ancient Via Appia Antica to the status of a World Heritage Site. As per the UNESCO’s dedicated website, this is what is meant (emphases mine):

More than 800 kilometres long, the Via Appia is the oldest and most important of the great roads built by the Ancient Romans. Constructed and developed from 312 BCE to the 4th century CE, it was originally conceived as a strategic road for military conquest, advancing towards the East and Asia Minor. The Via Appia later enabled the cities it connected to grow and new settlements emerged, facilitating agricultural production and trade. This property, composed of 22 component parts, is a fully developed ensemble of engineering works, illustrating the advanced technical skill of Roman engineers in the construction of roads, civil engineering projects, infrastructure and sweeping land reclamation works, as well as a vast series of monumental structures including, for example, triumphal arches, baths, amphitheatres and basilicas, aqueducts, canals, bridges, and public fountains.

In other words: it’s an awesome testament to the ingenuity of the Ancient Romans (esp. if one considers the pothole-riddled “roads” of the present), and as someone who, many years ago, spent an afternoon walking on the Via Appia Antica, visiting both the catacombs and retracing, so to speak, Saint Peter’s trip to Rome (albeit in reverse, i.e., leaving the city), one of the more memorable things anyone can do in the Eternal City.

For a few online impressions, do check out the Via Appia’s Wikipedia entry, the Associated Press’ rather celebratory (and well-deservedly so) piece, and don’t miss out on the Smithsonian Magazine’s equally fine (and massively illustrated) reporting dating 29 July 2024.

That said, without much further ado, I shall add to the celebration by adding a few vintage picture postcards showing the Via Appia. Enjoy!

The “Queen of the Roads” in Vintage Postcards

Below, the Tomb of Cecilia Metella (see also below), with the image taken from around the Church or San Sebastiano, i.e., right next to the early Christian catacombs at the “start” of the Via Appia just outside the Antonine Walls of Rome.

Sadly, none of these three postcards is dated, but since they all mention the Austrian Federal Printing Office (Bundesverlag), which was founded in 1923. Judging from the carriages in the above postcard, as well as the rather “desolate” landscape in the images reproduced below, I’m guessing these were done either a bit after the First World War or in the immediate post-war period after the second major conflagration (I’m guessing at the former).

Above, “antique tombs” are seen; below, the magnificent Tomb of Cecilia Metella, “built during the 1st century BC to honor Caecilia Metella, who was the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, a consul in 69 BC, and the wife of Marcus Licinius Crassus…The mausoleum was probably built in 30–10 BC”.

Below, another of these stunningly beautiful images of the Via Appia, although not much more information is available about either the image or the dating.

Shown are tombs and monuments somewhere in the Campagna on the road to Brindisi in southern Italy.

A Bit More Italianità, For Good Measure

The above postcard dates probably from around 1960-ish, and it shows an otherwise “unremarkable” stretch of the Via Appia with no further particulars to be found on the reverse of the postcard. It does remind me, however, of many good Italian vintage movies I watched some 20 years ago (which greatly helped me during my university days studying, among others, Italian).

It is also a wonderful contrast—and, in a way, a “return” to the trope mentioned at the top of this posting, to re-post this one particular picture postcard, which is also one of the oldest dated specimen in the Erich Sonntag Postcard Collection.

As can be seen, it’s dated 19 Jan. 1902, and it shows a couple of gentlemanly travellers on the Via Appia. If you read German, you can also see the overall trope—of the “Queen of the Roads”—written on postcard; for everyone else, here’s a quick translation:

Via Appia vecchia, Rome, 19 Jan. 1902

And here, my dear mademoiselle, behold the old “Via Appia”, the Queen of the Roads, the most beautiful destination near Rome, which offers the traveller a truly wonderful view of the countryside [orig. Campagna, a thinly veiled reference to Tischbein’s painting Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787), which was par for the course among the German-speaking Bildungsbürgertum]; there are many ancient tombs at both sides of the roads…

To my dear friend Aneta Pavlenko, do note the partially multilingual text—for the final two lines are written in French:

But, my dear mademoiselle, I wish to write to you in French, and I shall do so, too, another time, isn’t it? But this [postcard] is written thus, because I love German more than I love French.

The postcard is signed by one Ugo Fortini del Giglio, but I wasn’t able to find much, if any information about him (apart from this reference to his enrolment in the Roman medical university in 1911-12); the postcard was sent to one Anna Zwoláneck who then resided in Vienna’s District no. VIII, Tigergasse 17/19 (which is literally across the road from where I grew up), but I don’t know “more” at this point in time.

So, another intriguing “mystery” to be addressed (no pun intended), perhaps at a later time.

In the meantime, please join me in celebrating the “Queen of the Roads”.