Using the Ancient History Maps
The map of Roman, Byzantine and Greek sites in Europe, the Middle-East and Africa all use Google Mymaps as a service to visualize ancient historical sites easily on a map. All sites are connected to the actual Google entry, so you can easily click through to see reviews of the ancient sites and determine if these are worth visiting.
For ease of use, the sites have been split into several sections. By clicking on this button on the top left of the map you can activate or deactivate certain categories:
By clicking on “view larger map” on the top right of the screen, you also get an additional feature to search for results within all sites.
Categories on the ancient site maps
For the ancient Roman sites, the following categories were defined:
- Roman aqueducts and water supply (Includes cisterns and aqueducts.)
- Roman amphitheatres
- Roman army / defenses (Includes Roman city defences, legionary castellum, fortresses and for example Hadrian’s wall.)
- Roman baths
- Roman domus and villa
- Roman theaters
- Roman temples
- Roman / ancient history museums
- Roman cities / areas (Includes both minor and larger archaeological areas combining a mix of the above categories. In many cases these feature a museum, temples, bath complexes, an amphitheatre, housing and a theatre.)
- Other Roman ruins / remains (Includes Roman triumphal arches, Roman towers, Roman lighthouses, Roman mines, Roman mausoleums etc. In other words, everything not defined in the other 9 categories.)
In case you wonder why I did not include more categories: One limitation of Google is a maximum of 10 categories.
For the ancient Greek sites, the following categories were defined:
- Greek army / defensive
- Greek temples
- Greek theatres
- Greek cities / areas
- Other greek ruins / remains
For the Byzantine sites, the following categories were defined:
- Byzantine army / defences
- Byzantine Religious buildings (Includes churches and monasteries)
- Byzantine cities / areas
- Museums related to Byzantine history
Calculation of the weighted average score per Roman site / Roman ruin:
In the tables a column was added showing a weighted average score based on the number of reviews and the overall score given. Some of the listed Roman ruins are hardly visited. We could assume this is the case for a reason: A lack of facilities, a lack of information or a lack of historical value.
Therefore, I have created a new weighted average score to determine the “real” value of the site. The score is based on the assumption that less frequently visited Roman ruins in Spain have some sort of shortcoming, whereas frequently visited sites are so crowded the experience is reduced.
To calculate this new score, the score given by visitors to the site is added to the score based on the number of visitors. The score for the number of visitors is composed as follows:
- If less than 400 visitor reviews exist on Google, a score of 3 is given.
- For Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins with between 400 and 5000 reviews, a score of 5 is given. These could be sites that are of reasonable size, good preservation but not overcrowded.
- For Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins with between 5000 and 10000 reviews, a score of 4 is given. These sites are often high quality but are starting to be slightly touristic.
- For Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins with more than 10000 reviews, a 3 is given. Even though the sites will most probably be of extremely high quality, suitable alternatives with almost the same value can be found. For example, the Colosseum has around 300000 reviews, whereas El Jem’s amphitheatre has only around 4000 reviews while being of similar quality. This is not to say the colosseum is not worth visiting of course, but the ranking can be used to find the “hidden gems”.