Via Regia

Via Regia
Royal Highway
Route information
Length:	4,500 km (2,800 mi)
Time period:	Antiquity, medieval
Major junctions
From:	Moscow
To:	Santiago de Compostela
Location
Countries:	Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, Spain
Highway system
Transport in Europe

A Via Regia (Royal Highway) was a historic road in the Middle Ages. The term usually refers not to specific roads per se, but to a type of road, which was legally associated with the king and remained under his special protection and guarantee of public peace.

There were many such roads in the Holy Roman Empire, such as the King's road from Menzlin to Wismar in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which was the "most significant East-West road in the north" of the medieval West Slavic Lutician settlement areas, and the best-known road, the one running from the Rhine river through Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig (where it intersected the Via Imperii) to Silesia, which is generally referred to as Via Regia. In 2005, it was awarded the title of a European Cultural Route by the Council of Europe.

The Via Regia ran west–east through the centre of the Holy Roman Empire, from the Rhine at Mainz-Kastel (Elisabethenstraße) to Frankfurt am Main, trade city and site of the election of the King of the Romans, continuing along Hanau, the Kaiserpfalz at Gelnhausen, the towns of Steinau an der Straße, Neuhof, Fulda and Eisenach to Erfurt, a centre of woad production. It ran further eastwards to Eckartsberga, crossing the Saale river between Bad Kösen and Naumburg and reached Leipzig, another trade city. The eastern part continued through Upper Lusatia (Via Regia Lusatiae Superioris) along Großenhain, Königsbrück, Kamenz, Bautzen and Görlitz to Wrocław in Silesia with further connection to Kraków in Poland.

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Wikipedia