Traversal of a complicated route is often facilitated by considering it as a set of related sub-spaces. Such compartmentalization processes could occur within retrosplenial cortex, a structure whose neurons simultaneously encode position within routes and other spatial coordinate systems. Here, retrosplenial cortex neurons were recorded as rats traversed a track having recurrent structure at multiple scales. Consistent with a major role in compartmentalization of complex routes, individual retrosplenial cortex (RSC) neurons exhibited periodic activation patterns that repeated across route segments having the same shape. Concurrently, a larger population of RSC neurons exhibited single-cycle periodicity over the full route, effectively defining a framework for encoding of sub-route positions relative to the whole. The same population simultaneously provides a novel metric for distance from each route position to all others. Together, the findings implicate retrosplenial cortex in the extraction of path sub-spaces, the encoding of their spatial relationships to each other, and path integration. •Retrosplenial cortex encodes sub-routes in complex trajectories•Sub-route encoding manifests as periodic activation at multiple spatial scales•Sub-route encoding cannot be explained purely by movement correlates•Spatially symmetric activation patterns yield a novel metric of distance Navigation often requires the fragmentation of complex routes into more manageable sub-routes and encoding of their interrelationships. Alexander and Nitz show that retrosplenial cortex represents route sub-spaces via spatially periodic activation patterns. These firing patterns also yield a metric of the animal’s distance from all track locations.