Persian royal road: Did you mean...?

This map indicates trading routes used around the 1st century CE centred on the Silk Road. The routes remain largely valid for the period 500 BCE to 500 CE.

In this gallery, we look at the history of the last five royal houses of Britain through their family trees. From the Wars of the Roses to the current House of Windsor, we see an evolution from absolute rule to a constitutional monarchy...

A map of the Inca road system which included some 40,000 km of routes.

An Inca mountain road with bridge, approaching Machu Picchu.

A map showing the principal routes of the Roman road network in 125 CE.

A section of a Roman road with a typical polygonal stone surface. The stones also show the ruts made by Roman wheeled vehicles. This section is beneath the Arco dei Gavi, a 1st century CE arch in Verona, Italy.

A section of surviving Roman road near Cirauqui in northern Spain. The curb stones can be clearly seen, a common feature of Roman roads.

A photograph of a macadamised road taken in the 1850s. The macadamised road, that is, a hard and relatively smooth road surface made using two layers of stones (one aggregate layer and a top layer of very small stones), was first made on...

The Peace of Callias (aka Kallias) refers to a possible peace treaty made in the mid-5th century BCE between Athens and Persia following the Persian Wars. The existence of such a treaty is not agreed upon by all historians, and if it did...

A vision of the afterlife is articulated by every culture, ancient or modern, in an effort to answer the question of what happens after death. Ancient Persia had the same interest in this as any culture of the past or in the present day and...