Roman Miles to Kilometers (mp to km)

1 Roman mile equals 1.48 kilometers exactly.

1 Roman mile = 1.48 kilometers

How to convert Roman miles to kilometers

To convert Roman miles to kilometers, multiply the number of Roman miles by 1.48. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 0.6756756757 (rounded).

kilometers = Roman miles × 1.48

Example: 10 Roman miles = 14.8 kilometers.

Approximate value. Standards for the Roman mile varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Roman Mile (mp)

Ancient RomanHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

'A thousand paces' (mille passus): 5,000 Roman feet, about 1.48 km. The word 'mile' comes from it, and Roman roads were marked with milestones at this interval.

Latin speakers called it mille passus, a thousand paces, usually abbreviated m.p. A pace was counted each time the same foot struck the ground, so it spanned two steps and was reckoned at five Roman feet, which made the mile 5,000 feet. The English word mile descends from the shortened form of the Latin phrase, through Old English mil.

The length rests on the Roman foot, and that foot is not fixed precisely. Modern estimates of the mile cluster near 1,480 m, one empirical figure being about 1,479 m, and this is the figure used here. Marcus Agrippa's standard foot of around 29 BC is credited with indirectly standardizing it, but measured surviving feet vary by a few millimetres, which shifts the mile by metres.

Stone markers stood at every mile along the empire's paved roads, measured out from the Golden Milestone in the Forum. Eight Roman stadia made a mile, and in Greek-speaking provinces it was rendered as the milion. At roughly 0.92 of an international mile, it survives in the name of the modern mile, though later European miles drifted to very different lengths.

1 Roman mile = 1,480 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Roman mile; Wikipedia: Roman units of measurement

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.

A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.

Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre

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