Ruts on the roads of Pompeii reveal how the streets were used

Deliveries may have been by ox-cart rather than white van, but Pompeii still had its fair share of traffic problems.

After visiting the city’s ruins in 1867, Mark Twain noted “how ruts five and even ten inches deep were worn into the thick flagstones by the chariot wheels of generations of swindled tax-payers — I wish I knew the name of the last one that held office so that I could give him a blast. For 200 years at least the pavements were not repaired!”

Ruts such as the ones seen by Twain are now being used to document the intensity of the city’s traffic as well the size of its vehicles. Professor Eric Poehler, whose new book Traffic Systems of Pompeii analyses the city’s