“All roads lead to Rome” is a medieval proverb, but it’s also true: today’s European roads still follow the networks of the ancient empire—and these ancient roads continue to grip our imaginations as a physical manifestation of Rome’s greatness.

Over the two thousand years since they were built, these roads have been walked by crusaders and pilgrims, liberators and dictators, but also by tourists and writers, refugees and artists. As channels of trade and travel—and routes for conquest and creativity—Catherine Fletcher reveals how these roads transformed the cultures, and intertwined the fates, of a vast panoply of people across Europe and beyond.

The Roads to Rome is a journey into a past that remains intimately connected to our present. Traveling from Scotland to Cádiz to Istanbul and back to Rome, the listener meanders through nations and empires that have risen and fallen. We encounter spies, bandits, innkeepers, a Byzantine noblewoman on the run, aristocrats on their Grand Tour, Napoleon, John Keats, the Shelleys, Frederick Douglass, and Mussolini.