The remnants of the Appian Way, one of Europe’s first major highways, can be seen in some very surprising places all around Rome. One of them is in Marino, on the outskirts of the city, next to a McDonald’s where you can look through a glass floor and see the flat, gray paving stones of an ancient Roman road and its debris—including twisted skeletons –embedded in a two-millennia-old gutter.

The Appian Way, a road that has become iconically “Italian” as a result of being featured in many Italian movies, most notably Fellini’s 8 ½ and La dolce vita, was begun in 312 B.C. It reaches the eastern port city of Brindisi and it helped inspire the saying “All roads lead to Rome.”