Claim:
An online shared map authentically documents how ‘all roads lead to Rome’.
Judgement:
What is true:
The map is made with real data and explores the saying “All roads lead to Rome,” say the creators. However, …
What is not true:
It’s better to call it a ‘data visualization’ or ‘infographic’ as it’s not really a roadmap.
Context:
The image was created using real data, but is described by its creators as a “data visualization project that explores the phrase ‘all roads lead to Rome’.” It’s an “art-data” infographic, not an actual road map.
The proverb “All roads lead to Rome” is said to have originated in reference to the Roman monument known as the Milliarium Aureum, or golden milestone. Erected by Caesar, the point was said to be the center from which all distances in the Roman Empire were measured.
In the 21st century, the old saying was given a new twist when an image circulated in 2015 that claimed to show that, in a sense, all roads lead to Rome, even in modern times.
One such iteration was reshared to X on August 6, 2024. At the time of publication, the image had been viewed over 62.6 million times.
Although the image above was created in 2015 using real data, its creators describe it as a “data visualization project that explores the phrase ‘all roads lead to Rome.’” In other words, the image would be better described as an infographic or “data art” rather than an actual road map.
For these reasons we have assessed this claim as a ‘Mixture’.
Snopes traced the map to a website published by Philipp Schmitt, an artist and designer, where he describes the map as being made with anti-disciplinary designer Benedikt Groß. The map was created while the two were at the former moovel Lab research facility.
In a December 2015 post, Groß described the project as follows:
The result is both information visualization and data art, revealing mobility patterns at a very large scale. The visualizations were created using routing algorithms on existing street infrastructure from the city to the continental scale. The resulting images provide insights into the ways in which road infrastructure reflects regional, political and geographical situations.
The project is a thought experiment that shows nearly half a million ways someone can travel to Rome from major Western European cities.
Although the project website is no longer online, an archived version from January 2021 is available via the Wayback Machine.
To begin, the team aligned starting points in a grid spanning more than 10 million square miles that covered all of Europe. Each cell in the grid contained a starting point for one of the team’s “journeys to Rome.”
There are then 486,713 starting points to reach Rome. So the team created an algorithm that calculated one route to Rome for each European starting point analyzed. The team wrote:
The calculation and presentation of these different routes is based on several pieces of open source software. GraphHopper was our central tool for routing our journeys. In total, GraphHopper ran for 20 hours while calculating all the routes that were displayed on the maps. GraphHopper works with Open Street Map data, which was also essential for our project. The calculation and presentation of these different routes is based on several pieces of open source software. GraphHopper was our central tool for routing our journeys. In total, GraphHopper ran for 20 hours while calculating all the routes that were displayed on the maps. GraphHopper works with Open Street Map data, which was also essential for our project.
At the time of the project in 2015, it took GraphHopper on the team’s MacPro more than five hours to calculate the 400,000+ European routes to Rome.
“The maps resulting from this project lie somewhere between information visualization and data art, showing mobility on a very large scale,” the team wrote.
Hayley Drennon, a senior research associate at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who is not involved in the project, further confirmed that the image is based on “an algorithm that highlights all the roads leading to a point.”
Drennon compares the map to “Kevin Bacon’s six degrees” or “Bacon’s law,” a concept based on the idea that everyone in the world is connected by six or fewer acquaintances.
“Every major metropolis has major thoroughfares leading to it. We could also say that ‘all roads lead to Paris’ or ‘every road in America leads to Atlanta,'” Drennon told Snopes. “Because let’s face it, roads are like a circulatory system.”
The map of Rome was presented at the 2016 IEEE Visualization Conference, an annual meeting on scientific visualization, information visualization, and visual analytics, managed by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics. The mapmakers Groß, Schmitt, and Raphael Reimann are listed on page 18 of the conference agenda.
Snopes also found a project description (full text viewable here ) submitted to the 2016 IEEE VIS conference with more information about the project. The abstract read:
The proverb “all roads lead to Rome” is, if you look at it more closely, a very interesting suggestive statement of mobility. The goal of “Roads to Rome” was to find an automated way to visualize this saying. During the process of finding the right methods and approaches, the authors came across several inspiring further ideas. The authors created maps using algorithms for routing multiple starting points to one destination and also multiple destinations. The researchers also used the developed methodology on a small scale to visualize mobility network diagrams of selected cities. The resulting images are not only visually intriguing, but also allow conclusions to be drawn about how road infrastructure reflects regional, political and geographical situations.
In the project description, the authors call the maps ‘data art’, which are used to ‘integrate the aesthetics of art, based on the principles of real-world routing and large-scale data processing’.
In other words, the project goal was to “find an automated way to visualize the proverb,” all roads lead to Rome.
The team concludes its work with a disclaimer:
The various maps and figures resulting from ‘Roads to Rome’ show how mobility can be visualised at scale. Keep in mind that this project is a borderline case of ‘data art’, it allows for interpretations but should be treated with care when making decisions that require hard evidence, for example in infrastructure planning. Nevertheless, because it is closely linked to real datasets, it can be seen as a great starting point for mobility discussions, especially regarding street networks, politics and geography.
Together, the maps of Rome and the maps the team created to visualize other European and American cities demonstrate how mobility can be visualized on a large scale.
(Groot, Schmitt, Reimann)
Sources:
“About Philipp Schmitt.” Philipp Schmitt, https://philippschmitt.com/about. Accessed 30 Aug 2024.
Benedictus Groß. https://benedikt-gross.de/. Accessed August 30, 2024.
Bruney, Gabrielle. “Do All Roads Lead to Rome? The Answer Is Surprisingly Beautiful.” VICE, Dec. 12, 2015, https://www.vice.com/en/article/do-all-roads-lead-to-rome-the-answer-is-surprisingly-beautiful/.
GraphHopper Directions API with route optimization. Jan 24, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210124094411/https://www.graphhopper.com/.
—. Jan 24 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210124094411/https://www.graphhopper.com/.
IEEE VIS 2016. https://ieeevis.org/year/2016/info/vis-welcome/welcome. Accessed 30 Aug 2024.
Leavitt, Charles. “All Roads Lead to Rome: New Acquisitions Relating to the Eternal City.” Center for Italian Studies, Sept. 14, 2011, https://italianstudies.nd.edu/news-events/news/all-roads-lead-to-rome-new-acquisitions-relating-to-the-eternal-city/.
“Moovel.” MESO, https://meso.design/de/projects/moovel. Retrieved 30 Aug 2024.
OpenStreetMap. Jan 25 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210125020138/https://www.openstreetmap.org/.
—. Jan 25 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210125020138/https://www.openstreetmap.org/.
Reimann, Raphael, et al. “All Roads to Rome: Visualizing Mobility at Scale.” 2017 IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP), 2017, pp. 1–4. IEEE Xplore, https://doi.org/10.1109/VISAP.2017.8282376.
Roads to Rome. https://benedikt-gross.de/. Retrieved 30 Aug 2024.
—. Jan 25 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210125021250/https://www.move-lab.com/project/roadstorome/.
Stinson, Liz. “Do All Roads Really Lead to Rome? Some Designers Analyzed the Data to Find Out.” Wired. www.wired.com, https://www.wired.com/2015/12/here-are-all-the-roads-that-lead-to-rome/. Accessed Aug 30, 2024.
Welcome to IEEE VIS 2024! https://ieeevis.org/year/2024/welcome. Accessed 30 Aug 2024.