Long before airlines and high-speed trains, Europe was already crisscrossed by ancient trade routes. These ways weren’t just about selling and buying, they were highways of cultural exchange. Traders, explorers, and travellers carried spices, amber, silk, and their stories through countries, across mountains, and borders. Today, you can still follow these routes. The old paths […]
Long before airlines and high-speed trains, Europe was already crisscrossed by ancient trade routes. These ways weren’t just about selling and buying, they were highways of cultural exchange. Traders, explorers, and travellers carried spices, amber, silk, and their stories through countries, across mountains, and borders.
Today, you can still follow these routes. The old paths are there. The Roads leading out of Rome, the biggest rivers in Europe, which are still used for trading, and small forest tracks where the amber trade passed through.
Do you want to check them out? Here are some reasons why there are still interesting, and what routes you could take:
Traveling the ancient trade routes is of course about history. Seeing old monuments still standing there for thousands of years. But, it’s also about slowing down. Traveling and trading in the ancient or medieval times wasn’t fast, it took days, weeks or even months for the merchants to bring their goods from one to another market. And still they did it, and they started to connect Europe.
The Via Appia was built over 2,000 years ago. Its purpose was to connect Rome with southern Italy. As you walk or cycle along the old sections, you will pass aqueducts, tombs and stones that remain from the original street. It truly feels like stepping back in time to the era of the Roman Empire.
Trades were carrying the amber from the Baltic shores all the way up to the Roman markets. Picture the old merchants traveling through the forest, rivers and passing mountains, making their way up to Italy, wejre they can sell their goods. Rich Romans wore the amber as jewellery. Today, you can follow their footsteps through Poland, Austria, and Slovenia, pausing in medieval towns and sipping wine where traders once bartered their wares.
The Danube was always more than a river. As it is (more or less) located in the heart of the continent, and crosses several countries, it is the perfect way to transport stuff. In its long life, it carried grain, salt, amber, wood, and a lot of people who wanted to explore the world and tell their stories. Even today, you can still take a boat trip along the Danube and enjoy the landscape and towns through which the Danube flows in a special way.