Work / monument · infrastructure

Royal Road

The Royal Road was an ancient highway of the Achaemenid Empire running about 2,700 kilometres from Susa to Sardis, with relay stations along its length. Royal couriers using fresh horses could carry messages across it in around seven days. Accounts of the Achaemenid Empire present it as a key instrument of imperial communication and trade, building on earlier Assyrian road systems.

Royal Road
Image: Original creator: Mossmaps Corrections according to Oxford Atlas of World History 2002, The Times Atlas of World Hist... · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Mentioned in 2 profiles

Achaemenid EmpireSocioeconomy, Governance, ImpactKingdom of LydiaDecline

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Royal Road. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/royal-road
MLA
“Royal Road.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/royal-road. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Royal Road.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/royal-road.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Royal Road’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/royal-road (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻