There is a saying that all roads lead to Rome. The people at Moovel lab set out on 3.375.746 journeys to check if that was really true.
The question if really all roads lead to Rome bothered Benedikt Groß since quite a while. With the support of Philipp Schmitt the two set out on a digital navigation quest. The result of this quest are the maps documented by Raphael Reimann on the website "Roads to Rome". Besides that it forms a wonderful data visualization, is also revealing.
The calculation and presentation of these different routes is based on different pieces of open source software. GraphHopper was their central tool for routing the journeys. GraphHopper works with Open Street Map data, which has also been essential for the project. To find all roads to Rome it took GraphHopper more than 5 hours, calculating 486.713 Routes from every point in Europe to Rome.
On the website, you can also explore routes in your own city and create a data visualisation. You can create a map with their tool, showing the routes you can take to reach places from the centre of Amsterdam in 30 minutes by bike. Useful! Go and create your own.
