Walking the Camino on a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Road

As we walk the Camino, there are moments when the modern world quietly slips away. A yellow arrow points down a cobbled lane, church bells echo in the distance, and beneath our feet lies something far older than the pilgrimage itself — the stones of an ancient Roman road.Again and again, we are reminded that much of the Camino Portugues follows the route of the Via XIX, one of the great Roman roads built in the first century AD. This road connected Bracara Augusta — modern-day Braga — with Asturica Augusta, now Astorga. Along the way it passed through towns we have already visited or soon will: Ponte de Lima, Rubiães, Tui, Pontevedra, and Caldas de Reis. It is astonishing to think that these same routes once carried Roman soldiers in armor, merchants with heavily loaded carts, imperial messengers changing horses at roadside stations, and travelers moving across an empire that stretched across much of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.The Roman Empire eventually built more than…