Kilometre zero
location from which distances are traditionally measured
Kilometre zero (or km 0), also known as zero mile marker or zero milepost, is a particular location (usually in the nation's capital city) from which traveled distances are traditionally measured, as in distance markers. Historically, they were markers where drivers could set their odometers to follow the directions in early roaming guidebooks.
One such marker is the Milliarium Aureum ("Golden Milestone") of the Roman Empire, believed to be the origin for the maxim "All roads lead to Rome".
Countries
Argentina
Argentina marks kilometre zero with a monolith in Plaza Congreso in Buenos Aires. The work of the brothers Máximo and José Fioravanti, the structure was placed on the north side of Plaza Lorea on October 2, 1935; it was moved to its present location on May 18, 1944. An image of Our Lady of Luján (honored on the monolith as "the patron saint of the national road network") appears on the monolith's north face, a relief map of Argentina is on the south face, plaques in honour of José de San Martín are west, and on its eastern side, the date of the decree and the name of the relevant authorities.
Australia
Highways in Australia are usually built and maintained by the states and territories.
In the state of New South Wales, highway distances (mileages) were traditionally measured from a sandstone obelisk in Macquarie Place in Sydney, designed by Francis Greenway in 1818. The obelisk lists the distances to various locations in New South Wales at the time. For the railway, it is at platform 1 of Central station.
“Kilometre zero” enters the record as location from which distances are traditionally measured. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kilometre, zero and location can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Kilometre zero” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Kilometre, zero and location provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q329477. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1935, 1944 and 1818.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kilometre zero” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.