Brindisi Airport 2025: Complete Guide to BDS Aeroporto del Salento

Why Brindisi was the most important port in the Roman Empire — and what the columns at the end of the street mean

Brindisium (ancient Brindisi) was the terminus of the Via Appia — the regina viarum, the queen of roads, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312 BC and approximately 190 BC as the primary military and commercial route connecting Rome to its eastern territories. The two columns at the port (of which one survives intact at 5.6m height — the other fell in 1528 and its drum is displayed in Lecce's Piazza Sant'Oronzo) were erected at the road's terminus as a monumentalized ending point, visible from ships arriving in the harbour. Every Roman traveler who arrived from the east (Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria) entered Italy through Brindisi's port — the city's significance derived entirely from its position as the nodal point between Italian land routes and Adriatic sea routes. Virgil died in Brindisi in 19 BC, returning from Greece where he had gone to research the final revisions to the Aeneid. The hotel where he died (the "Villa della Pace" at the port — a later attribution that archaeology cannot confirm) has a commemorative plaque. The columns that mark the road's end are the most direct physical connection to the ancient world available at the airport's destination city.