The Almo River and the Old Paper Mill
Why is it significant?
Follow the road downhill under the railway bridge and feel the ground dip into a shallow valley. Behind a gate, red-roofed industrial buildings sit among the trees beside a stream you can barely see.
Key Facts
| Place | The Almo River and the Old Paper Mill |
|---|---|
| Address | Via Appia Antica 42, 00179 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.86820, 12.50200 |
| Part of Walk | Queen of Roads: Rome's Appian Way from the Baths of Caracalla to the Catacombs |
| Generated | Generated |
Follow the road downhill under the railway bridge and feel the ground dip into a shallow valley. Behind a gate, red-roofed industrial buildings sit among the trees beside a stream you can barely see. You have reached the Almo, the little river that crosses the Appian Way here, and the old paper mill that is now the headquarters of the Appia Antica park.
Time to meet the road properly. The Appian Way was begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius, later nicknamed Caecus, the Blind. It was the first great Roman highway, laid to move legions south to Capua, and it was later pushed all the way to Brindisi on the heel of Italy. The poet Statius called it the regina viarum, the Queen of Roads. Its miles were counted from the Porta Capena near the Circus Maximus, and the column that marked the first mile now stands on the balustrade of the Capitol.
The Almo was sacred. Every year at the end of March, the priests of Cybele, the Great Mother goddess brought to Rome from Asia Minor in 204 BC, carried her image and her sacred black stone down to this stream, near where it meets the Tiber, and bathed them in its waters. Drums, cymbals, ecstatic dancing, priests in long eastern robes... Romans came out to stare. A very respectable road, and on its edge, an oriental mystery festival.
Much later the stream turned mill wheels, and this mill ended up making paper. Then came the post-war building boom, when villas, walls and private gates began to swallow the ancient road. In 1953 the journalist Antonio Cederna published a furious article called The Gangsters of the Appia, and spent the rest of his life fighting for this landscape. The regional park was finally created in 1988, and the old mill became its home.
So every step you take from here is on protected ground. Walk on along the road. A couple of minutes ahead, where the Appia splits in two, a tiny church stands right at the fork. It is where the most haunting legend of this road takes place.