Appian Way by E-Bike

The Appian Way — built in 312 BC as Rome's first major highway — stretches southeast from the Aurelian Walls into open countryside lined with umbrella pines, crumbling tombs, and fragments of the original basalt paving stones worn smooth by two millennia of traffic. On Sundays, the road is closed to cars and becomes a pedestrian and cyclist paradise. An e-bike is the ideal way to cover the first 10 kilometres: the cobblestones are too rough for comfortable walking at speed, but an e-bike lets you stop at the Catacombs of San Callisto, the Circus of Maxentius, and the tomb of Cecilia Metella without exhaustion. The sense of riding a road that Roman legions marched is genuinely spine-tingling.