A story about modern maps and ancient geography appeared in my newsfeed recently, and I found it very inspiring for my own map-making. A scientific project has assembled the latest archaelogical and historical finds about the road system of the Roman Empire into the most comprehensive digital atlas yet (there have been others previously).

This is Itiner-e, a zoomable road map that can be displayed as an overlay over contemporary maps. It paints an amazing picture of the transportation network of the Roman Empire and for our purposes can serve as wonderful inspiration for fictitious places of similar technological level.

It also great fun to look around places where you live and have traveled too. While I live in a part of Germany that the Romans never colonized, and therefore none of their roads a close by, I did find an old Roman road in Wales that I have hiked on a few years back.

Brughmans, T., de Soto, P., Pažout, A. and Bjerregaard Vahlstrup, P. (2024) Itiner-e: the digital atlas of ancient roads. https://itiner-e.org/