Road station
Vacanas
Baccano
Listen to the story
Vacanas, today Baccano beside the small lake of the same name, was a road station on the Via Cassia that never had the rights of a town. The map gives it a small drawing of a building, of a kind often used for spas, but the picture lacks the usual central pool, and there were no hot springs here. The station mattered instead as a crossing of five roads, among them the Via Cassia, the Via Annia and the road to Veii. The map even runs the Via Clodia straight through it, probably for lack of space, though that road passed it by. Every distance around the station reads nine miles, and the one towards Careiae was probably added by a later copyist to fill a gap.