Roman Empire cities mapped

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Over the centenaries, the Roman Empire expanded from a little Italian town to control land everywhere in Europe over the Balkans to the Middle East and North Africa. The roads of the Roman Empire covered more than 400,000 kilometers (~250,000 milies).

At its peak, the Roman Empire had a population of approximately 60–70 million and a population density of nearly sixteen people per square kilometer (~ 41 people per sq mi). Opposite to the European nations of the classical and medieval times, the Roman Empire had extraordinarily high urbanization rates. Throughout the second century common era, the city of Rome had more than 1 million residents. No Western European city would have as many again until the nineteenth century.

The expansion of the Roman Empire to AD 117

Reddit user ImUsingDaForce made an incredibly detailed map of every Roman settlement that ever existed, with borders from 117AD.

He used 3 categories that the primary source grouped settlements into:

1. The precise location of a settlement – a physical place for which we are sure what the name was, or we have related the archaeological remains with a historic town we know about from the sources.
2. Likely location of a city – we have a site that we are reasonably sure what the settlement’s name was, but it is not definite.
3. Probable place of a town from historical sources for which we are not sure of where it was located precisely, but we have a conceivable archaeological site in the area that is a probable match.

The map below has 11 655 towns as a result.

Each Roman settlement (that ever existed, with boundaries from 117AD)

The map below shows every roman settlement that was ever founded or administered by the Romans and nothing else.

The population of the biggest cities in the Roman empire (1st century CE)
Rome 350,000
Alexandria 216,000
Antioch 90,000
Smyrna 90,000
Cadiz 65,000
Ephesus 51,000
Carthage 50,000
Corinth 50,000
Apamea 37,000
Capua 36,000
Ancyra 34,000
Nicomedia 34,000
Oxyrhyncus 34,000
Memphis 34,000
Damascus 31,000
Bostra 30,000
Athens 28,000
Tarragona 27,000
Cyzicus 24,000
Hermopolis 24,000
Pergamum 24,000
Mytilene 23,000
Arsinoe 20,000
Cordoba 20,000
Cirta 20,000
Hadrumetum 20,000
Pisa 20,000
Rusicade 20,000
Tyre 20,000
Catania 18,000
Nicaea 18,000
Antiochia 17,000
Antinoe 16,000
Sicca V, 16,000
Mérida 15,000
Miletus 15,000
Naples 15,000
Heliopolis 14,000
Baalbek 13,500
Thugga 13,000
Isaura 12,000
Sidon 12,000
Bologna 10,000
Cartagena 10,000
Hippo Regis 10,000
Jerusalem 10,000
Lambraesis 10,000
Pamplona 10,000
Thysdrus 10,000
Trebizond 10,000

Related post:
– Location of every Ancient Greek city outside of Greece and Cyprus, that still is inhabited today