Saintes to Périgueux roman road, Roman road between Saintes and Périgueux, France

The Saintes to Périgueux Roman road linked Mediolanum Santonum with Vesunna, the present-day Vésone district of Périgueux, across Charente-Maritime, Charente and Dordogne. Its best-documented stretch, the Chemin Boisné, runs about 60 km through Charente, largely beneath the RD 23, RD 22 and RD 5. Between Cognac and the Dordogne it follows the terrace between two Cretaceous limestone cuestas, Turonian to the north and Campanian to the south.

The road was probably begun under Augustus and continued in the 2nd century to link Saintes and the Atlantic coast with the Via Domitia via Périgueux, Sarlat, Rodez and Nîmes, a southern route to Italy more reliably passable than the Alpine crossing through Lyon. It likely reused a pre-existing Gallic track. In 830 Louis the Pious ordered twelve bridges on the route repaired.

The name Chemin Boisné appears in Charente land registries and medieval documents, the earliest transcription dating from 1297, when it was already a proper name. It may derive from "borné", bounded, referring to boundary stones added to the usual milestones, or to a boundary set by the Count of Angoulême. In 1826 the route was still called Chomi Bouinat, and boina means boundary stone in Occitan.

In Charente the route is covered by the RD 23, RD 22 and RD 5, and between national road 10 and Châteauneuf-sur-Charente it coincides with the GR 4 long-distance footpath. Elsewhere the line is read from aerial photographs, as along the D2 and D106 in Dordogne. The track crosses the Dronne at Port-d'Ambon and the Lizonne at a ford near Champagne-et-Fontaine.

The route left Périgueux through the Porte Normande and passed through what is now the Toulon district, where a milestone was found; archaeologist Wlgrin de Taillefer later placed its original position in the Vignéras valley, east of that line.