Photo: moovel labs
Back when the Roman Empire’s capital was the cradle of civilization, it made perfect sense for all the roads in the world (or Europe, but people had a limited view of the world then) to lead to Rome. Mostly because Romans were the only ones building them...
Since then, others have started to build roads as well, so Rome’s construction monopoly isn’t still active. But that doesn’t mean that the now Italian capital city can’t still be made into the world’s belly button. Using technology and nice graphics, of course.
A team of designers working for moovel lab set out to discover if all roads did actually still lead to Rome, and weren’t satisfied with the obvious answer: who cares? Their names are Benedikt Groß, Raphael Reimann and Philipp Schmitt, and they apparently cared enough to explore the possibility.
In doing so, they came up with what has got to be the most beautiful map of Europe since those early ones with drawings of sea monsters and barbarian hordes. The team started with a blank map of Europe on which they superimposed a 10,231,707 square-mile grid (26,500,000 square kilometers - guess which of the two measuring units the team used).
They then divided the grid into 486,713 individual cells and considered each of them a departure point for a fellow traveler who just had to be in Rome as quickly as possible, but only traveling by car. Using highway data from Open Street Map and a routing engine called GraphHopper, they factored in all these journeys, with the roads getting thicker the more travelers used them.
Besides strengthening the obvious conclusion - highways are faster, go to one as quickly as you can and never get off until you reach your destination - what the team managed to create is something extremely beautiful. These maps are almost organic, showing that humans too can create something that resembles nature, like a network of rivers.
Having all this tech at their disposal and knowing the recipe all too well now, the team began replicating the procedure in other places. For instance, it turns out the US has no less than ten towns by the name of Rome or Roma, so that gave birth to one map.
Or how about the quickest way of getting from each point of a state to its capital? And why not change the scale a little and do the same thing inside the world’s major cities? The possibilities are limitless, but the outcome is always equally spectacular. Browse through the images below or go to the Roads to Rome project’s website here.
A team of designers working for moovel lab set out to discover if all roads did actually still lead to Rome, and weren’t satisfied with the obvious answer: who cares? Their names are Benedikt Groß, Raphael Reimann and Philipp Schmitt, and they apparently cared enough to explore the possibility.
In doing so, they came up with what has got to be the most beautiful map of Europe since those early ones with drawings of sea monsters and barbarian hordes. The team started with a blank map of Europe on which they superimposed a 10,231,707 square-mile grid (26,500,000 square kilometers - guess which of the two measuring units the team used).
They then divided the grid into 486,713 individual cells and considered each of them a departure point for a fellow traveler who just had to be in Rome as quickly as possible, but only traveling by car. Using highway data from Open Street Map and a routing engine called GraphHopper, they factored in all these journeys, with the roads getting thicker the more travelers used them.
Besides strengthening the obvious conclusion - highways are faster, go to one as quickly as you can and never get off until you reach your destination - what the team managed to create is something extremely beautiful. These maps are almost organic, showing that humans too can create something that resembles nature, like a network of rivers.
Having all this tech at their disposal and knowing the recipe all too well now, the team began replicating the procedure in other places. For instance, it turns out the US has no less than ten towns by the name of Rome or Roma, so that gave birth to one map.
Or how about the quickest way of getting from each point of a state to its capital? And why not change the scale a little and do the same thing inside the world’s major cities? The possibilities are limitless, but the outcome is always equally spectacular. Browse through the images below or go to the Roads to Rome project’s website here.
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