High-precision GPS survey of Via Appia: Archaeoastronomy-related aspects

Via Appia was built by the Romans around 312 BCE to connect Rome with Capua during the Samnite wars. The road is an astonishing engineering masterpiece. In particular, the segment which runs from Collepardo to Terracina – 61 km long – is renowned for being virtually straight; however this “straightness” was never investigated quantitatively. As a consequence, the techniques used by the ancient surveyors and their scope – whether it was only practical, or also symbolic – remain obscure. We report here a high-precision GPS survey of the road, performed with a u-blox receiver and further checked with a dual frequency receiver. We give a detailed analysis of the methods used and of the errors, which are shown to be less than 6’. To our knowledge it is the first time that such a long ancient manufactured structure has been surveyed with such a high accuracy. The results lead us to conclude that astronomy was certainly used in the construction of the road and in that of the associated grid, oriented to the setting of the star Castor and to the cardinal points respectively.