The Appia Antica is the oldest thing in this collection of walks and the only one you walk on rather than past: the regina viarum, the queen of roads, begun in 312 BC, still paved in the black basalt the Romans cut it from. It runs out of the city through a corridor of tombs because Roman law put the dead outside the walls, so the great families lined the road home with their monuments.
Start at the Domine Quo Vadis church, where the traffic gives up and the road becomes a walk. Past the catacomb gates — San Sebastiano below, tours only — to the Circo di Massenzio, a private Roman racetrack lying empty in the grass, where you can walk straight out onto the track.
The turning point is the Mausoleo di Cecilia Metella, a drum tomb the Caetani fortified into a castle, battlements on Roman stone. Beyond it the road becomes the picture everyone carries: rutted basalt, broken tombs, umbrella pines, open country. Walk as far as you like, then turn for the bus back to Circo Massimo and the Metro B.
