Welcome to the last of three articles following the ancient Roman road called the Via Flaminia from its start in Rome to its finish in Rimini. If a web search has led you directly to this article, I do recommend you read them in order. You can find the first one here, and the second one here.
The first article discussed the origins of the Roman military roads called “consular roads”, and followed the Via Flaminia from its start in Rome, as far as the ancient town of Carsulae in Umbria.
The second started with a discussion of how the roads were built, and what that means when one is looking for remnants. It then continued with a detailed itinerary through Umbria, including a walk along one of the sections, and a look at the town of Bevagna (ancient Mevania) where the Via Flaminia is the main street. On the way I had some fun using Google Maps satellite imagery to try and find traces of the road that are not obvious at ground level.
So let us continue, but first a look back at where we have come from. The photograph below taken from the hill behind Spello (ancient Hispellum) looks west across the Valle Umbra towards the Monti Martani. The Via Flaminia came up behind the mountains, then, as they turned into mere hills, the road turned right near the modern town of Bastardo and headed for Bevagna.
From Bevagna the road crossed the valley to a place called Forum Flaminii, where the eastern branch of the Via Flaminia rejoined the western.
Into the Mountains
After Forum Flaminii we must hope that our legionaries were by now feeling fit, because that was the end of the flat territory for a long time. Between Spello and Trevi a gap in the mountains leads to a long valley, heading due north and rising steadily up into the Apennines. A New Zealand friend who understood these things once told me that when you see a long straight valley in a mountain range, you are probably looking at a fault line. The number of earthquakes over the years in this part of Italy suggests that is true here as well.
Passing through the town of Nuceria Camellaria (modern Nocera Umbra), the road climbed into territory that was more and more wild and rugged, eventually crossing the watershed at a place called the Scheggia pass, about 600 metres above sea level. Shortly after this, at a place called Cales (Cagli), the road turned abruptly right, and started on a direct line to the sea, following the valleys of mountain torrents, firstly the River Burano, which flowed into the River Candigliano at a place now called Acqualagna.
I do not yet have any photographs which can give any sense of this, so here is a screenshot from Google Earth, looking north from Scheggia, with the probable course of the Flaminia highlighted to the point where it turns northeast towards the sea.
The Flaminia was now descending quite steeply through a series of narrow valleys and gorges, and it was by no means the first road to follow this very ancient route – the Etruscans, the Umbri and their Neolithic predecessors had all traded salt from the Adriatic into central Italy this way.
Mountains, Tunnels and Bridges
On this stretch, one is struck by the number of ancient survivals there are. Near Cagli, there is a Roman bridge (now called the Ponte Grosso) over the Burano River. I took photographs of this in June 2008 and it was in remarkably good condition, still carrying local traffic.
Unfortunately, floods in 2022 caused significant damage, which was unrepaired on a visit in 2024 and remains so still (in 2026), which is the cause of some local concern. Let us hope that the authorities do something about it before another flood or an earthquake makes things any worse.
After the Burano flows into the Candigliano the river passes through a narrow gorge – the Gola del Furlo – and it is here that one of the most remarkable survivals of the Via Flaminia can be found.
A narrow lake runs through the gorge, but this would not have been there in ancient times; it is the result of a dam built for a hydro-electric power station in 1922, which is still operating. Above the lake, on a nearly-vertical slope, can be found three parallel passages.
Starting from the outside, the first passage is a ledge cut into the rock, allowing the Flaminia to pass around the outside of a massive outcrop.
Just next to the ledge, you can see a small tunnel, about 8m long.
And then, furthest from the gorge, is a large modern-looking road tunnel, about 40m long and 6m high.
While many of the historical details of these three passages are clear, some things are less so and sources can be a little contradictory. Here is what I think is a plausible sequence.
Firstly, there must have been some way around the outcrop in the very earliest days of salt trading – the Bronze Age or even Neolithic – otherwise there would not have been a road here at all. This would presumably have taken the form of a narrow natural ledge.
At some point the smaller tunnel was cut, to get past a particularly difficult section. Some sources say this was Umbro-Etruscan (perhaps 4th Century BC), while others date it to the initial construction of the Flaminia in the 3rd Century BC. However signage at the site suggests that it was a temporary fix made during the upgrade of the Flaminia during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD).
Then Roman engineers widened the existing narrow path by building retaining walls to extend it out from the cliff edge, and laying flagstones to protect the softer limestone of the mountain from being worn away by the road traffic. This extension would have needed constant maintenance. If the small tunnel dates from the Augustan period, perhaps the extension of the external path does as well.
Finally, in the years 76-77 AD, in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, the largest of the three tunnels was built. Go back and look at the photograph of that tunnel again – that’s right, that modern-looking tunnel that you can drive through today (I have done so) is 1,949 years old as I write this in 2026.
As remarkable, perhaps, is the fact that until construction of the nearby autostrada in the 1980s, this road, now mainly used by sightseers, cyclists and the occasional history blogger, was the main road between the coast and the area of Umbria around Gubbio. Ordinary cars and trucks would have used this ancient tunnel every day.
There is no argument about the origins of this tunnel: near the northern entrance is the following inscription:
‘IMP(erator) CAESAR AUG(ustus) / VESPASIANUS PONT(ifex) MAX(imus) / TRIB(unica) POT(summer) VII IMP(erator) XVII P(ater) P(atriae) CO(n)S(ul) VIII / CENSOR FACIUND(um) CURAVIT’ (source: Wikipedia, quoting the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum).
In country like this, one risk to the road would be washouts caused by meltwater torrents in spring. Doing things properly as always, the Roman engineers built drains and culverts to divert the water under the road.
Bandits
Where there is difficult terrain, and a road carrying tempting trade goods, you are likely to get bandits. There are records that one of the duties of the small Roman army detachment here, in addition to keeping the road maintained, was suppression of banditry. At various times since, over the centuries, distant authorities have either sought to exert control over the road, or largely abandoned it. As a strategic route, it was fought over, and fortified, during the Gothic Wars of the 6th Century, and afterwards taken by the Lombards.
While there were some famous travellers over the road in the Renaissance (Lucrezia Borgia, and Pope Julius II, both doubtless with substantial military escorts) it was only towards the end of the 18th Century that the road was properly re-opened, and policed.
One 20th-Century set of “bandits” – at least that is how the government would have referred to them – was made up of anti-fascist partisans. In the 1930s this road was sometimes used by Benito Mussolini when travelling between Rome and the north. The local Forest Guard, in a gesture of loyalty, carved a large profile portrait of the dictator on one of the cliff faces. During the war some of the partisans partially destroyed it, and apparently traces can still be seen, but I didn’t manage to identify it. Or more precisely, I saw several sections of the cliff that might have been the portrait of Il Duce, but might have just been random bits of rock – the mind is good at interpreting random bits of rock face as a human face, particularly when looking for a jutting rock-like fascist chin.
Getting to the End of The Road
After the Gola del Furlo, the road becomes less steep and the valley widens out as the river – by now the Metauro – starts to wind from side to side as it approaches the Adriatic. The mountains are now rolling hills and the river flows not between canyon walls but, increasingly, between floodplains.
The Flaminia is now mostly underneath several layers of later road, but there is at least one more place where you can see the original. Just as the ancient road came out of the mountains it came to a prosperous town called Forum Sempronii, a name which over the centuries has been transmuted into the modern Italian Fossombrone.
Forum Sempronii was named after Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (154-121 BC), a soldier and politician in the late Republican era who with his brother has been either reviled as a dangerous demagogue or celebrated as a pioneering social reformer. Retelling his career here would take the article off in the wrong direction, but it is worth recording that his reforms, especially land ownership reforms, must have been influential if they named a town after him.
Fossombrone is an attractive town in its own right, but one of its attractions to the history enthusiast is that the modern town does not sit on top of the ancient one but just west of it, which has allowed the latter to be subject to proper archaeological investigation. We were there on a very hot day in July 2024, and I did feel a bit sorry for the couple of archaeologists who were working in the heat.
And from my point of view, the big thing is that there is a surviving stretch of the Via Flaminia that you can go and look at, and walk along. This is because for some reason the SS3 deviates a few metres to the north, revealing the ancient road. Here as in Carsulae the Flaminia is an urban road, so it gets the full treatment – basalt paving stones, with drains and footpaths at the edges.
Before long the Adriatic comes into view up ahead and the long descent from the mountains is over. On reaching the coast at Fanum Fortunae (modern Fano) our legionaries would then have swung left up the coast, arriving quite shortly at Pisaurum (Pesaro).
After Pesaro the ancient route is a little unclear for a while – there is a line of hills quite close to the coast and the modern main roads, both the SS16 and the E55 Motorway, follow the inland edge of those hills. I have seen suggestions that the Flaminia tracked close to the coast, but these have a slightly speculative tone.
However in the next town up from Pesaro, now the seaside resort of Cattolica, the renovation of a house in 2020 revealed remains of a Roman road, probably the Flaminia. Here is an article (in Italian) about the rediscovery. So whether the road hugged the coast or went inland, it seems likely that it was definitely at the coast at what is now Cattolica.
Which is where I rejoined it, for the final run into Ariminium (Rimini) where it ended. And as in Rome at the Porta Flaminia, here there is no doubt at all, because when the renovation of the road under Augustus was complete, they erected a big ceremonial arch where the road entered the town.
Thanks to the re-use of the name where the modern road follows the ancient one, I also had the pleasure of hearing my satnav say things like “at the next roundabout, take the second exit and continue on the Via Flaminia”.
If you drive around here you might notice other road signs with classical associations. I went past a sign pointing to the “Rubicone Industrial Zone”. Yes, the Rubicon. Ariminium was one of the northernmost cities in what the Romans in the Republican period considered to be Italy. Beyond that (the Po Valley) was Cisalpine Gaul, with a substantially Celtic population. The boundary was the little river Rubicon. Roman generals were not allowed to bring their armies into “Italy” without the permission of the Senate, and so when Julius Caesar famously crossed the Rubicon without authority, it was an act of defiance. “Crossing the Rubicon” therefore became a common metaphor for passing a point of no return. “Alea iacta est” (the die is cast) said Caesar as he crossed, thereby coining two common metaphors in a single action.
Until 1933 no-one could really agree where the Rubicon was, other than just north of Rimini. This close to the Adriatic, and before artificial canalisation, rivers changed course frequently when they flooded, and the name “Rubicon” had fallen out of local use. So the Fascist government decided to rename a river called the Fiumicino (“Little River”) as the Rubicone. Not everyone agrees, but the modern Rubicon is probably not far from the ancient one. It enters the sea at the modern beach resort of Cesenatico, if you want to find it yourself.
In Rimini, the Arch of Augustus now stands alone, but was a gate in the town walls until the 1930s when the structures either side were demolished. It is also obvious that the top of the arch has been repaired and is of medieval construction, thanks to the characteristic Ghibelline “swallowtail” crenellations. This section does however incorporate part of the original Latin dedicatory inscription.
From Ariminium another major consular road – the Via Emilia – continued towards the northwest, which even more than the Flaminia is quite faithfully represented in the modern road system. Another road – not a consular road – ran up the coast through the marshlands of the Po Delta, but this only became important later.
And that is the end of my (reconstructed) journey along the Via Flaminia from Rome to Rimini. Although I have written it as if it were a single journey, the photographs were taken over a period of 20 years or more. I have no idea whether anyone else will enjoy reading this, but as the idea of the project grew, I had a lot of fun working on it. I have no doubt that I will acquire more photographs and information that will add to the story, and will update things as needed. If you are one of the many people who know more about this subject than I do, please use the comments to advise me of any errors.
