Highway that consolidated Roman empire joins modernist Romanian sculptures as latest sites added to list

Italy’s Via Appia Antica, or Appian Way, the earliest and most important road built by the ancient Romans, has been named a Unesco world heritage site, making Italy the country with the world’s highest number of locations on the coveted list.

Known as the Regina Viarum, or Queen of Roads, it connected Rome with the port of Brindisi in the south and marked a revolution in the construction of roads.

The first section of highway was built in 312BC by the Roman statesman Appius Claudius Caecus and served as a strategic corridor for military purposes. Until then, the only roads outside ancient Rome were Etruscan and went towards Etruria, which was a region of central Italy.

Today, the first 17km (10 miles) of the cobblestone path remains and is preserved within the Appia Antica archaeological park in the south of Rome. Popular with history buffs, walkers and cyclists, the perfectly intact road is flanked by what remains of ancient Roman aqueducts and villas. Beneath the path is a sprawling network of catacombs where Christian converts were buried.