Rome's First Roads

Romans built roads because they needed to travel faster and the roads they had were very hard to travel.

First, to start with, they dug a big, deep trench and then poured sand on, a nice layer of sand.

Next, they poured small stones and then they put a clay mixture like concrete on top of the little rocks. The concrete was made of volcanic ash, a white powder called lime, and water. On top of the clay mix they put bigger rocks like our patios that we have at our houses. They put pillars to show you how far away the next town was.

Romans built thousands of miles of roads all over Italy and even past Italy. Some of the roads we can still see today, but not all of them. One road is called the Appian Way and they still use it.

Romans built so many roads that people said, "All roads lead to Rome." But that is not true, not all roads lead to Rome. But the reason why they said that is the roads started there and there were so many of them.

Also something they did with their concrete was make so many other things with it like apartment buildings.

The Romans also built aqueducts to get water because there were more people coming to Rome and they needed more water. Aqueduct means "to lead water". They built sewars to bring the icky water out of Rome so that no sickness happened.

For a good video on this you can watch "Engineering and Empire: Rome" by the History Channel.