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The geography of the ancient Roman world allows for a better understanding of how space, climate, and terrain influenced the development of the Roman Empire. In this category, you’ll find articles on Roman provinces, cities, regions, borders, and important transportation routes of the ancient world. We cover Italy as well as the areas of Europe, Africa, and Asia under Roman rule. This content helps us understand the interrelationships between geography, politics, trade, military affairs, and everyday life in antiquity.
The most famous Roman fortifications are the border fortifications in Europe, such as Hadrian’s wall and Antoninus in Britain, Upper Germanic-Rhaetian limes in southern Germany, Lower Germanic-Rhaetian limes on the Rhine in today’s Germany and the Netherlands. There was Limes Sarmaticus on the Danube, border fortifications were also built in Dacia and the Crimea.
When reading about events in the history of the Roman Empire, you sometimes come across geographical names that cannot be intuitively defined on the map of modern countries. Names of lands, such as: Pont, Bithynia, Cilicia, Phrygia, Galatia, Lydia, Pamphilia or Paflagonia are not to be found on the maps of contemporary school geographic atlases.
The Baltic Sea is not far from the former theatre of Roman military campaigns and research expeditions. How did the Romans imagine its location and coastlines? Have they ever influenced the reservoir over which present Poland lies?
Ireland in ancient times was called by the Romans Hibernia (from the word hibernus – “winter”). The Romans certainly had commercial contact with the inhabitants of the island. The question arises: what did they know about “Green Island” and whether a Roman legionary appeared on the Irish coast?
Hadrian’s Wall, Vallum Hadriani, is perhaps the most famous of the Roman limes. It was built in the years 121-129 CE and stretched 117 kilometres in the present-day village of Bowness on the Solway Firth to the Segedunum fortress (today it is Wallsend on Tyne).
One of the most interesting – and possibly the most beautiful – cities of the Roman Empire was the former capital of the Nabataean Kingdom: Rakmu, better known as Petra. Incorporated into the empire during the reign of Trajan in 106 CE, it became the capital of the Arabia province and began to develop dynamically.
