Travel has been in man’s blood since the beginning of time. In order to facilitate travel, we built roads. This list looks at some of the most unusual and interesting roads. The only requirement for the list is that the road must still exist today. Most are modern.
Claim To Fame: Gravity hills appear to defy the laws of physics
Unlike the other streets on this list, this is not a specific street but rather a variety of streets – there are, in fact, hundreds around the world. When you park your car at the foot of a gravity hill (also sometimes called Magnetic hills or Mystery hills), the car will appear to roll up the hill – not down. The reason for this is an optical illusion caused by the surrounding environment. If you are interested in visiting a gravity hill, Wikipedia has a list of their locations around the world.
Claim To Fame: World’s Shortest street
Ebenezer Place is the shortest street in the world, measuring just 2.06 meters (6.8 ft). There is just one house on the street, number 1 Ebenezer Place which was built in 1883. The building is a hotel (Mackays) and the owner was instructed to paint a street name on its shortest side. It was officially declared a street in 1887.
Claim To Fame: World’s longest road
The Pan-American Highway is the longest motoring road in the world. It has replaced Yonge Street (in Toronto Canada) as the longest road since changes were made to the configuration of Highway 11 and Yonge Street in the 1990s. The Pan-American highway links the mainland nations of the Americas and is an amazing 48,000 kilometers (29,800 miles) long. The highway passes through 15 nations, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and El Salvador.
Claim To Fame: World’s narrowest street
Parliament Street is in Exeter, England. It is the narrowest street in the world, measuring less than 0.64m (25″) at its narrowest point. It was originally called Small Street (for reasons that are obvious) but was renamed when parliament passed an act of law that expanded the representation of the people in the house of commons. The street dates from the 1300s and it is 50 meters long.
Claim To Fame: World’s oldest paved road
The Road to Giza is the world’s oldest known paved road. The road is over 4,600 years old and is six and a half feet wide. It covered a distance of seven and a half miles – connecting the quarries to the Southwest of Cairo, to the quay on Lake Moeris which connected to the Nile. The road was used to transport the enormous blocks of basalt to Giza where they were used for building (especially for paving).
Claim To Fame: World’s widest street
9 de Julio Avenue (meaning 9th of July Avenue – in honor of Argentina’s independence day) is the widest street in the world. It has six lanes in each direction and it spans an entire city block. There is a single building that sits on the Avenue (the former Ministry of Communications building) but there are many famous landmarks along the side – such as the old French Embassy, a statue of Don Quixote, and the famous obelisk (visible in the picture above) and Plaza de la República.
Claim To Fame: World’s crookedest street
Lombard Street in San Francisco is famous for its bizarre hair-pin turns. There are eight of the turns (called switchbacks) and the street is known as the “crookedest street in the world”. The turns were added because the street would have been too steep for most vehicles (though it would still be less steep than the street in item 1). The twisting section of Lombard Street is now one way – in order to make it safer and there is a parking ban in place.
Claim To Fame: World’s worst roundabout
Anyone who has been on the Internet for a while will recognize the Magic Roundabout – it has appeared in virtually every “funny picture” list you can find. The roundabout is a real roundabout in Swindon, England. It was built in 1972 and it includes 5 other smaller roundabouts. To make matters worse, you must travel anti-clockwise (the reverse of the normal situation on British roundabouts) when you enter the smaller central roundabout. The Swindon Junction has been voted the worst junction in Great Britain.
Claim To Fame: Only street in Britain where you must drive on the right
As most of our readers will know, the British drive on the left (unlike Europe and the United States). But there is one exception to this rule: Savoy Court is the only street in Britain where cars must legally drive on the right. Apparently this dates back to the old Hackney Cabs – by driving on the right, the driver was able to open the backdoor without leaving the cab, allowing the passengers to alight on the sidewalk. This is allowed by a special act of parliament.
Claim To Fame: Steepest street in the world
Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand boasts the steepest street. New Zealand has many cities built on or around mountainous and hilly areas, and Dunedin is no exception. This street (and many others in New Zealand) were designed by British town planners who had never been to the country. They simply overlaid a grid pattern on the map and had no idea that they had made impossible or ridiculous design choices. The slope on Baldwin street has a 35% grade. The road is so steep that at the top it is made of concrete because the usual road surfacing material used in New Zealand (asphalt) would slide down the street in hot weather.
Contributor: JFrater
This is one of the best lists I’ve read. Not just on this site either, but ever. Great format, pictures, and just enough information on each entry. The thing I like most about this list though is that it’s unusual and very interesting. Jfrater, I tip my hat to you
The roundabout in #3 is a monstrosity! And here I was thinking that the worst roundabout in my city (can be viewed at http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-34.927838,138.623316&spn=0.001577,0.002403&t=k&z=19) was a terror
I’ll have to show this list to anyone I know that complains about our ‘little’ roundabout now 
I think the problem a lot of people have when trying to negotiate difficult intersections is that they get caught up in the hype about how bad they are and that affects their driving. Similar to what happens when inexperienced drivers cause accidents with trucks or road-trains: they get a bit scared and make a mistake they wouldn’t normally make.
I want to do a road trip along the entire Pan-American highway now…that would be amazing. Almost as amazing as the look on the service assistant’s face when I return the hire car at the airport in Beunos Aires with an extra 100,000km on the odometer
Precision: I consider all roundabouts “terrors”! Mostly because they don’t normally have them here in California, and many of the ones that do exist near where I live have only recently been added, for no other reason than for looks or something. Since none of us learned how to act on a roundabout, everybody acts like idiots!
116. astraya: After a couple of recent lists exploded in controversy recently… I thought “Surely nothing can explode in this list”. I was wrong. segue: “At the time, I was driving a 1960 Porsche 356 Cabriolet, so the **tranny** and brakes got a work-out now and then.” …I thought “transvestite”, …“transistor radio” … then I finally thought “transmission”. I’m sure one of those is correct.
****
Transmission. My mechanic was a close friend (he had to be, the car required a lot of babying).
Precision: I used to live on Kensingston Rd, Norwood and go around that roundabout every day (in a bus). It’s (slightly) better now that the island is bigger. I can’t figure out why they don’t put traffic lights in, so traffic enters from only one direction at a time.
DK – probably best that you don’t visit Australia’s capital Canberra then. That city is well known here for it’s large number of roundabouts.
astraya – small world hey, I work in Norwood
Personally I’ve never had much of a problem with that roundabout, it’s just a matter of ‘give way to the right’. I think the problem is that ‘the right’ means ‘backwards over your right shoulder’ at that intersection 
as for traffic lights, I think money talks on that one…
My town in Australia has roundabouts everywhere… Basically wherever there was once an intersection now has a roundabout now. It drives me absolutely insane!!
Great list especially after those Medical Anomalies and stuff. Could anybody post a list on old prophets and their nations ? IU was reading about Sodom and Gomorrha last night and I felt like making a list but could not find more of these kind of cities and people but Im really fond of reading these kind of past happenings ! Thanks
this is a sweet list
champs elysees
France
wow, that round about would be insane to drive throught, this is pretty intresting
check out commonwealth avenue in the philippines, it has 9 lanes on each side. it also has the record for having the most accidents per year. i went to a clinic along commonwealth once, the doctor on duty told me that on average 2 people die on that small clinic every night. from what ive seen, commonwealth ave has 4 or 5 hospitals and small clinics along its stretch. the casualties may vary from road mishaps, car jackings or drive by shootings. this street should be number 1 on this list haha.
I used to live in the Bay Area and have done Lombard St. several times, as well as the Mystery Spot in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Five years ago I moved to South Africa. There are roundabouts EVERYWHERE. Between my house and the supermarket, less than 5 km away, there are 5 of them, plus another one actually in the supermarket parking lot! Imagine going through those things while simultaneously sitting on the wrong side of the car, shifting with the wrong hand, driving on the wrong side of the road! I’m OK with them now, but the first couple of years of driving here were a nightmare!
sweetviolet- I didn’t find it nearly so bad to adjust to a whole new way of driving, less than 4 months. Tons of people do it every year.
downhighwway61: it was a lot easier when I got an automatic. A high performance sports car with the 6-speed shifter on the wrong side, sitting on the wrong side of the car, driving on the wrong side of the road…too much to deal with all at once.
THEN, add in the traffic circles…South Africans treat them like 4-way stops where nobody knows who has the right of way. And, unless you’ve been here, you won’t have a clue about the minibus taxis and their drivers, who think nothing of stopping an entire lane of traffic and blocking the intersection to take on a passenger.
It’s an interesting place to drive, South Africa
Ligeia: I loved The Shambles – we walked it a couple of times and then went back again on a ghost tour as well. Locved the story of the house dedicated to the saint (the catholic woman who hid catholic priests during their persecution (In Henry VIII’s reign I think). I’d been inside and been “suitably impressed” during our own ‘walk-through’ but when we went back – the guide pointed out that the city had bought the wrong house and her REAL house was on the opposite side of the street and about five houses further in!
I also remember (I had forgotten) all the chocolate/sweets shops there: not to mention the “antiques” and gift shops!
Did you get into King’s Square at the end of The Shambles? Actually, the Square is at the end of the Little Shambles which The Shambles runs into – we were standing just where Little Shambles opens into the Square, looked down and realised the stone flagging on the raised section we were on were actually tomb-markers – absolutely COOL!
Great list!
I’ll have you know I found your site this weekend and spent all of Sunday and half of Monday catching up on all of the lists. Definitely a new fan here!
(with a bit of a sore neck from sitting in a computer chair for hours on end, LOL)
The Panamericana is great, I had the opportunity to run the Mexican Carrera Panamericana in 2004 and 2005, and as an organizer since.
http://www.lacarrerapanamericana.com.mx/index2.asp
Great list.
Regarding #2, Savoy Court, I’ve been dropped there by a cab on a number of occasions. The Savoy Hotel entrance looks much more impressive in photographs than in real life, though, IMHO. There are also a couple of interesting streets/tunnels beneath the Savoy that it seems only London cab drivers are aware of.
And, I remember reading in a NZ magazine that Baldwin St (#1) is a perennial and irresistable magnet to university students in wheelie bins – I wasn’t aware that someone had died doing it, though. Bummer.
I live about a minutes walk from Baldwin st. I’ve walked up it three times since we moved here a couple of months ago
Designating the Pan American the longest road sounds like a bit of dick waving, because it IS broken by the Darien Gap – the most notorious piece of land in the world.
I watched an interesting documentary about a guy who was attempting to travel the Pan American, and it took him TWO MONTHS and a lot of near death moments to cross the Darien Gap because of pirates, non-existent roads, jungle, river (and their non-existant barges/shipping) and threats from drug/gun runners.
Hey there Amanda – good call. I was gonna mention the Darien Gap (which separates the northern sections of the ‘highway’ from the southern sections by 62 miles (100 kilometers) of NOTHING. So it really can’t be called a highway, can it??? It’s two separate highway systems.
Which brings me to ask why the Eyre Highway across the Nullabor Plain in Australia wasn’t included – given it supposedly contains the longest straight stretch of road in the world! (and it’s not cut in half by swamps and jungles with NO roads).
140. Amanda -
topically off topic- just love the term ‘dick waving’
I remember my parents taking us to Baldwin St. Awesome.
ooo and we went to a Magnetic Hill somewhere in Canada or the States. That was pretty neat when I was 6!
Cool list, but I don’t understand the list placement.
how interesting to read all your comments.for more info of
the shortest street, it is in wick caithness scotland.
does that put your mind at rest smurff? i am a scot myself
but i live in wales now…….i am a newie on this site,
and i am enjoying it. joke now….in wales if you talk about
someone you usually say jones the fish or jones the baker,
one day a stranger came to the village and asked a local
where john hughes lived. he said i don”t know, but if you ask
williams one eye he will know.so he went to williams one eye
and he got the info. but he was curious so he went back to the first man and said that, williams one eye he has got two
eyes. then the first man says i know. then why do you call him one eye, and he answered. because he lives a one high street………….. never mind…harry.
Nice list Jamie! I live very close to Lombard St., and driving a car with a manual gears is not a joke here. There are other streets that have much higher grade (about 31-32%, Filbert and 22nd) than Crooked street. However, Canton Ave. in Pittsburgh unofficially beats even the Baldwin street with 37% grade.
People I see on these very streets of San Francisco doing skateboarding amaze me for being so daredevil.
haha that roundabout looks like a real pain in the ass when you’re late for work.
Steepest street? why… you should visit the steets in Baguio City Philippines… your car could double back and turn 180 degrees going up… hahaha
narrowest, steepest etc…in the world? come to some streets in India, Paksitan and i’ll show you narrower, steeper streets, roads…
I’d prefer if this list says “narrow street”, “steep street”, not ” in the world”…its just that most of us haven’t been there…
Why are all these lists so American and European btw…
i believe vermont street in san francisco is “crookeder” than lombard…
with regards to the worst roundabout ive seen one thats worse. theres one like that in england, hemel hempstead
its pretty much the same as that but theres about 8 mini roundabouts. its amazingly hard to drive around
I really feel like I’ve seen this exact list somewhere else…
There is a mini Lombard st. in SF. All I’ll say is its behind General Hospital, Not as fancy nut just as crooked.
Enjoy!
I live in Exeter, right near #7, and its such a handy street, a really good shortcut. You have to make sure you don’t go down it when someone else is coming through it from the other end, as there is no room to pass each other. Not a good place to go if you are claustrophobic!!
#4 is not the crookedest street in San Francisco, despite its famous reputation. The much less tourist-friendly Vermont street in Potrero Hill holds this distinction:
http://californiabeat.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/forget-lombard-this-is-san-franciscos-real-crookedest-street/
How awesome would it be to ride a bike of long board down that street in New Zealand?
Saying that the Pan-American highway now bests Yonge Street in Toronto for being the longest motoring road doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Regardless of what has altered Yonge Street’s claim to the title, the fact is that the two are so distantly related that they shouldn’t be compared.
First Yonge Street was never even close to 48,000 km long (probably wasn’t even 48 km) so the Pan-American would have beat it regardless of what modifications occurred. But the fact remains that Yonge Street is a “street” and the Pan-American Highway is a “highway” and the two (while both allowing automobiles to move along) have completely different functions.
After the mayors daghter got killed in one of the many crashes near the worst traffic lights ever in my town, he demanded that a round about be installed. It’s great, but in the patch of grass in the middle, there’s so many advertising signs that I’m starting to question that they’res grass there.
Why is it, at street #2, that Europe and the United Kingdom are named seperately? The UK is part of Europe, but the writer of this article didn’t seem to realise that….
sentiao: to members of the commonwealth, Europe often refers to the landmass rather than the political unit. Traditionally (until the Channel Tunnel), the United Kingdom was not physically connected to mainland Europe. The writer DOES realize that the UK is now politically a part of the European Union – he lived there for three years.
Cazza, the Magic Roundabout in Hemel Hempstead is dead easy to drive round, as I do so every day! I also pass the backwards hill in Aston Clinton every day (I live near there) It is mentioned on the Wikipedia article.
Argentina has also the longest avenue in the world.
Avenida Rivadavia
Excellent!But, just a correction. The 9th of July Avenue is a wonderful street, but it isn’t the World’s widest street. It was. But since 1960′s is the Eixo Monumental de Brasília,no Brasil. Last year i went to Buenos Aires and a cicerone told this to my group during a city tour.
Gostei da materia!
bjs…
a little correct, widest street is actually Shk zayed road with 9 lanes in every direction ..
Awesome work btw !
Hey I live in New Zealand and grew up in dunedin where I remember our sunday family drives when my dad often drove to the top of baldwen street and turned around always scaring us kids! Though a few years ago some students were being silly and one guy jumped in a wheelie bin and slid down the street only to hit a powerpole and die instantly…
very very interesting list…!!!
I can see the magic roundabout from my house and go round it practically everyday, it looks daunting for people who’ve never seen it before but once you’re used to it it’s easy & it WORKS.
HEY. We have a place like this in Romania, Maramures county but the road angle is much higher. I did this myself and not unly with my car I also put a bottle of water on the ground and it up the hill
I found some clips on youtube about Maramures weird hill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXSfr4RE_DY&NR=1
People from all over the country come to see the miracle. I live in Maramures.
When I went one time there I checked the speed with which my car goes up. About 10km/h.
Sorry i didn’t mention I am talking about #10
There’s one deserving road I think was omitted from this list, the Yungas(death) road. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road. Also known as the world’s most dangerous road.
Sekate-kate….Behh…Bener2. I like wide street who have many lanes. I wonder if my city have that kind of street, maybe traffic jam is no more. Memang bener2….
Nice info, gan.
I’m pretty sure there is an Interstate 10 stretch in Houston that is significantly wider than Avenida 9 de julio. I’m not sure how many lanes it has, but I know it totals more than 22. Now, it’s a freeway and the construction ended just a few months ago, so I’m not quite sure it qualified for the list :p
A couple of days ago some people in Dunedin were charged by police for going down Baldwin St in a chillybin towed by a car. I had a booze/hill related incident in Dunedin, but came out totally unharmed. Speights and hills don’t mix!
Fabulous list as usual. Out of all, I’ve only been to Lombard St. and it truly is a bizarre and wonderful place. I hope to travel to all these other locations before I die
World’s worst roundabout is quite right! Dang!
you forgot Devon street in New Plymouth New Zealand, the longest straight piece of road in the southern hemisphere!!