The road which is the subject of this article was first drawn to our attention in the winter of 1963–64 by Professor Dinu Adamesteanu, then Director of the Aerofototeca del Ministero. The area concerned, between the Via Prenestina and the Via Casilina, was already threatened with the development which has since overwhelmed large tracts of the periphery, and in the spring and summer of 1964 we made a number of field trips to record what could then be seen of the road itself and of the sites immediately adjoining it. Shortly afterwards, on learning that the topographical record of this whole area had been placed in the capable hands of Dr. Lorenzo Quilici, the results of whose work will shortly appear in a volume of the Forma Italiae, we turned our attention elsewhere. (Plate XVIII; Fig. 1.)

Since then indiscriminate building has in fact engulfed large stretches of the Via Prenestina; the banks of the Fosso di Pratolungo (Fosso di Ponte di Nona) have been savagely quarried for tufa, and the Ponte di Nona, the finest Roman bridge of the whole Campagna, has become the epicentre of a vast municipal garbage dump.