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Rome
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Idioms:
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Idioms beginning with Rome:
Rome wasn't built in a day
In addition to the idiom beginning with Rome, also see all roads lead to Rome; fiddle while Rome burns; when in Rome do as the Romans do.
Classical Literature Companion:
Rome |
Rome (Rōma)Ancient Rome stood on the left bank of the river Tiber, about 22 km. (14 miles) from the sea, in the territory of Latium near its northern boundary, south of Etruria. The site was already inhabited in the second half of the second millennium BC. Rome's history is divided into three main eras: a largely obscure early period ending in (traditionally) 510 BC, when the last king was expelled and a republic was set up; the republic, lasting from then until 27 BC, when Augustus became the first emperor; and the empire, which came to an end when the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in AD 476.
The surviving traditions about the foundation and early history of Rome depend mainly upon historians who were writing more than 500 years after the event (see HISTORIOGRAPHY
There appear to have been many wars during the early regal period as a result of which Roman territory was enlarged. Rome destroyed Alba, according to legend, when Tullus Hostilius was king (see HORATII AND CURIATII), and under Ancus Marcius founded a colony at Ostia near the mouth of the Tiber. Under Tarquinius Priscus (Tarquin, said to be an adventurer, half Greek and half Etruscan, who came to try his fortune at Rome and won the throne) and his two successors, Etruscan influence became strong at Rome. The Etruscans, a powerful commercial and industrial people, may have conquered Rome; or the Etruscan cities may have accepted Tarquin as their king.
The Tarquins were expelled in 510 BC, and with their departure the probable domination by Etruscans was ended; despite the efforts at restoration by Lars Porsen (n)a, monarchy was abolished at Rome. The struggle is reflected in the famous legend of the outrage on Lucretia.
The constitution which followed the expulsion of the kings in 510 BC was an aristocratic republic. The king was replaced by two magistrates elected annually (praetors, later called consuls). Later, in times of national crisis, their powers might be temporarily superseded by the appointment of a dictator, but the senate was now the real governing force in the state. The history of the republic during the next 250 years consists in the main of two struggles: an internal class struggle between the privileged patricians and the unprivileged plebeians, during which the republican constitution was hammered out; and an external struggle with the surrounding peoples, at first mainly defensive but subsequently aggressive, at the end of which Rome emerged supreme as the head of a confederacy embracing all Italy. The class struggle (often known as the conflict of the orders) saw the plebeians gradually admitted to various offices of state and ended in 287 with the Hortensian Law (passed by the dictator Quintus Hortentius), which made the decrees of the concilium plebis binding on all the Roman people, not just the plebeians. The outcome of the struggle was the formation of a mixed patrician and plebeian oligarchy of nobilēs, who monopolized office as exclusively as the patricians alone had done hitherto.
In its external relations, in this early period of the republic, Rome had to face assaults from every side (the legends of Lars Porsen(n)a, Horatius Coclēs, Cloelia, and Mucius Scaevola all refer to Rome's struggles with Etruria). In the second half of the fifth century Rome passed from defence to aggression, capturing the Etruscan town of Veii in 396 BC, but in about 390 BC Rome itself was sacked by the Gauls, except for the Capitol (according to the usual legend), which was bravely held by a small force under M. Manlius Capitolinus (see MANLIUS for the story of the geese saving the Capitol). Thereafter the city was rebuilt and refortified, and Rome entered on a long and arduous period of expansion. For seventy years Rome was at odds with the Samnites, a warlike mountain-people of the Abruzzi, east of Rome, before finally subduing them in 290.
Rome was now drawn into southern Italy, where the Greek cities of Magna Graecia were being hard pressed by Lucanian tribes, and by 270 had subjugated the whole region. By successful wars against the Umbrians, Picentēs, and Sallentīni in 270–266 she became supreme in the whole peninsula south of the river Rubicon. Peace was at last substituted for war as the normal condition of life in Italy. Rome did not force her civilization on others, but gradually local languages, cults, and customs gave way to a common culture based on the Latin language and Roman law. When Ptolemaic Egypt entered into a treaty of friendship (amicitia) with Rome in 273 it signalized the fact that Rome was now a Mediterranean power. This was the era to which Romans looked back nostalgically as to an ideal time, the formative period of the Roman character when life was simple and austere, and morality uncorrupted.
Rome was now a Mediterranean power, and as such came into contact with Carthaginian interests in Sicily. The conflict with Carthage and Rome's eventual triumph (see PUNIC WARS) gave her control of the western Mediterranean. Rome wished for no further conquests, but she desired security and that meant crushing any rival power; Macedonia, for example, was annexed as a province in 146, and a long series of Spanish campaigns, terminated in 133 by the capture of Numantia, resulted in the subjugation of the greater part of Spain. In the same year Attalus of Pergamum bequeathed his dominions to Rome (see ATTALIDS). They were formed into the Roman province of Asia. In the West the southern part of Gaul, Gallia Narbonensis, was made a province in 120. There was thus an enormous expansion of Roman territory in the second century BC. At the same time economic and social life in Rome and Italy underwent profound changes. In many parts peasant husbandry had given place to capitalist farming of huge estates. Industry and commerce had expanded generally and, although the aristocracy did not take part in these enterprises, the equitēs (see EQUESTRIAN ORDER) were considerably enriched. Slavery increased, both on the land and in households. Rome quite suddenly acquired immense wealth from booty and tribute, there was a great increase in luxury of all kinds, and great public building works were undertaken. In all spheres, art and architecture, literature and religion, Greek influence was strong; the earliest Roman historians actually wrote in Greek.
The last century of the Roman republic was a period of acute social and political struggle. There was discontent in the provinces, whose governors were often unscrupulous and ambitious, seeking to enrich themselves and to acquire power. Army commanders were also personally ambitious, and the army increasingly looked to them rather than to the senate to provide bounties and distributions of land, thus introducing a dangerous element into political life. The senate itself had become more oligarchic and less democratic in its attitudes, showing a selfish attitude towards the Italian allies, denying them citizenship and many of the spoils of war which they had helped to win. The first attempt to deal with some of these problems was made by the Gracchi, who tried to reform agrarian laws in favour of the poorer citizens. Their eventual failure was followed by a conservative reaction, and by the war with Jugurtha (112–105). This war was conducted so ineffectually by the senate that the people and equitēs acting together had the command given to Marius. His dispute with Sulla for the command against Mithridates of Pontus led to Sulla's march on Rome in 88 at the head of his legions, and ushered in a period of civil war and bloodshed. Sulla was established as dictator and sought to re-establish the power of the senate over the tribunate and over army commanders, but these measures did not long survive his retirement in 79.
The second stage of Rome's civil wars is associated with the names of Pompey, Julius Caesar, Crassus, and Cicero. In this struggle all thoughts about the good of the republic gave way to the ambitions of individuals who sought power for themselves alone. Their fortune was built on their conquests as military commanders and they enjoyed what amounted to private control over loyal and effective troops, who realized that their own profit depended upon the success of their leaders. In 60 was formed the compact between Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus known (in modern times only) as ‘the first triumvirate’, by which they secured for themselves a commanding position in the state. It endured, while Caesar was conquering Gaul and Britain, until Crassus was killed after a Roman defeat by the Parthians at Carrhae in 53, after which rivalry between Caesar and Pompey developed into war. Pompey was utterly defeated at Pharsālus (in Thessaly) and was murdered in Egypt in 48. Whether or not Caesar intended to end the republic, his dictatorship introduced the principle of personal autocracy into the constitution. His programme of beneficial legislation was cut short by his assassination at the hands of senatorial conspirators in 44. Instead of the restoration of the republic which the conspirators had hoped for, a third round of civil war followed. Mark Antony, Caesar's colleague in the consulship of 44 and at first the natural leader of the Caesarian party, found his position threatened by
The republic had collapsed through lack of a large bureaucracy capable of managing the very complicated empire Rome now governed, and through the rise of military dictators. Using the framework of the old republic Augustus created a new system which was to some extent a compromise: he retained sole control of the military forces and foreign policy as well as general supervision over the machinery of government, but he left a share in administration to the senators and, especially, to the equites. Augustus himself adopted the outward appearance and mode of life of a republican magistrate, but his real position far exceeded that of a magistrate and he was in effect raised to a monarchical position. He made a great effort to restore by legislation the traditional religion and morality of the Roman people and to restrain luxury. The effect of his laws for this purpose was at best only temporary. As regards foreign policy, ambitious plans in the East were abandoned, and the efforts of the empire concentrated on the Romanization of Gaul and the acquisition of a strong frontier in the West. During the subsequent 300 years the centre of gravity of the empire was to shift to the East, the constitution of Augustus was to be radically modified, and in the end the West was to be over-run by barbarians. But none of this was to happen until Augustus' aims of Romanizing western Europe had been achieved in a form that would survive these upheavals.
Augustus died in AD 14. The next four emperors—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—were related by blood or adoption and are known as the Julio-Claudian emperors. The key events of this period—AD 14–68—included the conquest of Britain in 43 (under Claudius) and the burning of Rome (under Nero). The fire gave Nero the opportunity to begin rebuilding Rome on an imposing scale, and he drew up regulations for broad, orderly streets in place of the twisting alleys of the old city. His own great monument—the Golden House—was destroyed after his death, but this made available to his successors a large area for building, on which were erected some of Rome's greatest landmarks over the next half century—above all the Colosseum.
When Nero died in 68, the last of Augustus' line, there was no constitutional provision for the succession, and civil war broke out. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius were successively and very briefly made emperor by provincial armies until stability was restored under the wise and efficient rule of Vespasian (69–79) and his sons, Titus and Domitian (although Domitian's final years were despotic). Vespasian restored by prudent economy the finances which had been utterly disorganized by the prodigality of Nero and by the civil war, strengthened the existing frontiers, and admitted more provincials into the senate so that it became more representative of the empire. Vespasian's son Domitian was succeeded by Nerva, who ruled briefly (96–8) and then by Trajan (98–117). Under Trajan, Hadrian (117–38), and the Antonines (138–92) the Roman empire reached its greatest extent—stretching from Scotland to North Africa and from Spain to the Persian Gulf—and its peak of peace of prosperity. In a famous passage in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon memorably evoked this age: ‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [96] to the accession of Commodus [180].’
As the quotation from Gibbon suggests, it is with Commodus (180–92) that the decline of the empire is usually said to begin. After his murder there was civil war, but Septimius Severus (193–211) established a new dynasty, which ruled until 235. His son Caracalla (211–17) extended Roman citizenship to all freemen throughout the empire. When the last of the dynasty, his cousin Alexander Severus (222–35), was murdered, military anarchy followed, with emperors succeeding one another rapidly and increasingly bad government in the provinces. The frontiers were under pressure from the enemies—particularly the Goths in the north—who would eventually over-run the empire. Diocletian (284–305) divided the empire into four administrative units—two eastern and two western—ruled by joint emperors. Constantine (306–37) restored the unity of the empire and moved his capital to Constantinople. Theodosius I (379–95) was, however, the last ruler of a unified Roman state, the division between east and west becoming permanent at his death. In 402 the capital of the western empire was moved from Rome to Ravenna, and Rome was sacked by Visigoths in 410 and Vandals in 455. The last Roman emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476 by Odoacer, who became the first barbarian king of Italy.
For a period of almost a thousand years after this, Rome degenerated, and—even though it was the seat of the papacy—it was of only marginal or intermittent importance in European affairs. Its history from the fifth to the early fifteenth century is one of extraordinary strife and chaos, and it was sacked by the Arabs in 846 and the Normans in 1084. The population, which at the height of the Roman empire probably reached a million, had dropped by the fourteenth century to about 20, 000. Large areas within the ancient walls were densely wooded and inhabited by wild beasts, and sometimes only the tops of ancient buildings projected above piles of debris. It was Pope Martin V (reigned 1417–31) who began the restoration of Rome to a great city.
Archaeology Dictionary:
Rome, Italy |
[Si]
Below the modern streets of the capital of Italy lie the remains of one of the greatest and most influential centres in the ancient world. Legend holds that Rome was founded in 754 bc by the twins Romulus and Remus who were abandoned by their parents but suckled by a she-wolf, but archaeology shows that the story begins rather before this and can be divided into five main phases.
The early settlement began in the 10th or 9th century bc when a series of farmsteads and villages developed on the famous seven hills (Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal) overlooking the River Tiber. The areas between the hills were poorly drained and were used as burial grounds.
In the 7th century bc the existing settlements were brought together as an Etruscan city by rulers from the north. New and substantial buildings were erected and the low-lying marshland was drained and used for the construction of public buildings and the city centre. The city became an important religious and trading centre.
In the 6th century the Romans rose in revolt against their Etruscan rulers and expelled them from the city. In place of the monarchy they set up a republic with power vested in a senate and two annually elected consuls. The city quickly grew and by the 4th century needed its own water supplies to be brought via the Aqua Appia, the first of many aqueducts feeding the city.
Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 bc was followed by the development of imperial rule, headed by the first emperor, Augustus. By this time Rome was the largest city in the ancient world with a population of around 1 million people. Augustus and his successors embarked on ambitious building programmes and the expansion of the empire to support it. By the later 3rd century ad the empire had reached its peak and from that time began to decline. Defence became important and one of the most conspicuous monuments even today are the massive walls started by the emperor Aurelian around ad 271. Rome declined in importance during the 4th century ad, and was sacked by the Goths in ad 410.
Rome retained its pre-eminence as a religious centre and Papal State into the Middle Ages and beyond, while classical Roman traditions lived on in art and architecture.
[Sum.: A. Claridge, 1998, Rome. An Oxford archaeological guide. Oxford: OUP]
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Rome |
Rome, Ital. Roma, city (1991 pop. 2,775,250), capital of Italy and see of the pope, whose residence, Vatican City, is a sovereign state within the city of Rome. Rome is also the capital of Latium, a region of central Italy, and of Rome prov. It lies on both banks of the Tiber and its affluent, the Aniene, in the Campagna di Roma, between the Apennine Mts. and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Called the Eternal City, it is one of the world's richest cities in history and art and one of its great cultural, religious, and intellectual centers.
The rise of Rome from an insignificant pastoral settlement to perhaps the world's most successful empire-supreme as a lawgiver and organizer, holding sway over virtually all the then-known world W of Persia, on which it left a permanent imprint of its material and cultural achievements-is one of the great epics of history. Whatever its fortunes throughout history, Rome has remained the symbol of European civilization. Because of the complexity of the subject matter, the following article is divided into several sections, and additional information will be found in the articles to which there are cross references. See also Roman art; Roman architecture; Latin literature; Roman religion.
The Modern City
In the past half century Rome has expanded well beyond the walls started in the 3d cent. by Emperor Aurelian, and it now extends north to the Aniene. Long sections of the ancient walls have been preserved, however, and archaeology remains an essential element of modern city-planning in Rome. Ancient marble columns and ruins rising beside modern apartments and offices, noisy boulevards, and luxurious villas and gardens characterize the modern city of Rome. As in ancient times, the larger section of Rome lies on the left bank of the Tiber, which intersects the city in three wide curves and is spanned by over 20 bridges.
Economy
As in ancient times Rome is a center of transportation. It is the focus of international traffic by road, rail, sea (at the port of Civitavecchia), and air (at Leonardo da Vinci international airport at Fiumicino) and is as well a cultural, religious, political, and commercial center of international importance. Public transportation in Rome is provided by an elaborate bus system. A subway, the Metropolitana, was opened in 1955. Rome's large number of automobiles has caused serious traffic congestion, and in the 1970s and 80s various attempts were made to deal with the problem, including the banning of traffic in certain parts of the city. The economy of Rome depends to a very large extent on the tourist trade. The city is also a center of banking, insurance, printing, publishing, and fashion. Italy's movie industry (founded in 1936) is located at nearby Cinecitta.
Landmarks and Institutions
Aside from modern residential quarters, the right-bank section of Rome contains Vatican City, including Saint Peter's Church, the Castel Sant' Angelo, and the ancient quarter of Trastevere. In describing the larger left-bank section one may use the Piazza Venezia, a central square, as a convenient point of departure. It lies at the foot of the old Capitol (see Capitoline Hill) and borders on the huge monument to King Victor Emmanuel II and on the Palazzo Venezia, a Renaissance palace from the balcony of which Mussolini used to address the crowds. A broad avenue, the Via dei Fori Imperiali, runs from the Piazza Venezia SE to the Colosseum, leaving the Emperors' Fora and at a distance the Church of St. Peter in Chains (San Pietro in Vincoli) to the left, and the Capitol and the ancient Forum to the right. From the Colosseum the Via di San Gregorio continues south past the Arch of Constantine and the Baths of Caracalla to the Appian Way. There, as in other places on the outskirts of Rome, are large catacombs. From the Piazza Venezia another modern thoroughfare, the Via del Mare, leads southwestward to the Tiber and then east past the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls (San Paolo fuori le Mure) to Ostia, Rome's ancient port now blocked by silt, to the sea at Lido di Roma.
The narrow and busy Via del Corso leads N from the Piazza Venezia past the Piazza Colonna (now the heart of Rome) to the Piazza del Popolo at the gate of the old Flaminian Way. East of the Piazza del Popolo are the Pincian Hill, commanding one of the finest views of Rome, and the famous Borghese Villa. In the widest westward bend of the Tiber, W of the Via del Corso, is the Campo Marzio quarter (anciently, Campus Martius), where most of the medieval buildings are located; there also are the Pantheon (now a church) and the parliament buildings. To the east of the Via del Corso the fashionable Via Condotti leads to the Piazza di Spagna; a flight of 132 steps ascends from that square to the Church of the Santa Trinità dei Monti and the Villa Medici. The Quirinal palace is NE of the Piazza Venezia. In the southeastern section, near the gate of San Giovanni, are the Lateran buildings.
As an educational center Rome possesses-aside from the Univ. of Rome (founded 1303)-the colleges of the church, several academies of fine arts, and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (founded 1584), the world's oldest academy of music. The opera house is one of Europe's grandest. The various institutes of the Univ. of Rome were formerly scattered throughout the city but were transferred in 1935 to the northeastern section.
Among the countless churches of Rome there are five patriarchal basilicas-St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore), St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, and St. Paul's Outside the Walls. With the exception of St. Mary Major, the basilicas and other ancient churches occupy the sites of martyrs' tombs. Characteristic of the old Roman churches are their fine mosaics (4th-12th cent.) and the use of colored marble for decoration, introduced in the 12th cent. by the workers in marble known as Cosmati. Rome's first mosque opened in 1995.
Among Rome's many palaces and villas the Farnese Palace (begun 1514) and the Farnesina (1508-11) are particularly famous; others, all dating from the 17th cent., are those of the great Roman families, the Colonna, Chigi, Torlonia, and Doria. Rome is celebrated for its beautiful Renaissance and baroque fountains, such as the ornate Fontana di Trevi (18th cent.). Its richest museums and libraries are in the Vatican. Others include the National (in the Villa Giulia), Capitoline, and Torlonia museums, notable for their antiquities; and the Borghese, Corsini, Doria, and Colonna collections of paintings.
Rome before Augustus
Ancient Rome was built on the east, or left, bank of the Tiber on elevations (now much less prominent) emerging from the marshy lowlands of the Campagna. The seven hills of the ancient city are the Palatine, roughly in the center, with the Capitoline to the northwest and the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, and Aventine in an outlying north-southwest curve. The Pincian, N of the Quirinal, is not included among the seven. In the westward bend of the Tiber, W of the Quirinal, lies the Martian Field (Campus Martius), facing the Vatican across the Tiber. On the side of the Tiber opposite the Palatine is the Janiculum, a ridge running north and south, which was fortified in early times.
Early in the first millennium B.C. the Tiber divided the Italic peoples from the Etruscans in the north and west (see Etruscan civilization). Not far to the north were the borders between the Sabines and the Latins; the Sabines were closely related to Roman life from the very beginning. The hills of Rome, free from the malaria that had been the bane of the low-lying plains of Latium, were a healthful and relatively safe place to live and a meeting ground for Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans. In the 8th cent. B.C., the fortified elevation of the Palatine was probably taken by Etruscans, who amalgamated the tiny hamlets about the Palatine into a city-state. Tradition tells of the founding of Rome by Romulus in 753 B.C. (hence the dating ab urbe condita, or AUC, i.e., from the founding of the city), and of the Tarquin family, the Etruscan royal house. It was probably Etruscan rule that civilized Rome and gave it the hegemony of Latium.
The Roman Republic
The Romans overthrew their foreign rulers c.500 B.C. and established the Roman republic, which lasted four centuries. The patrician class controlled the government, but the plebs (who comprised by far the major portion of the population) were allowed to elect the two patrician consuls, who held joint power. The vitality of the patricians was remarkable, and long after political power had been granted to the plebs, experienced patricians continued to govern Rome.
As the majority realized its power and the aristocracy continued its rule, the people demanded (and received) privilege after privilege; the greatest were the election of plebeian tribunes (see tribune) and the codification (c.450 B.C.) of the Twelve Tables. With the growth of the city, multiplication of consular duties called for new officials: quaestor, praetor, and censor. The three popular assemblies, or comitia, developed slowly, but they quietly abstracted legislative power from the patricians. The ancient senate, theoretically the supreme power of the state, became more and more powerful until in the 3d cent. B.C. it controlled the consuls completely.
Although the Roman republic was never a true democracy, historians have modified the traditional view that it was the tool of a powerful aristocracy and have acknowledged that the system had open aspects beyond the control of the ruling class. It remains true, however, that it was under senatorial administration that Rome began its march to world supremacy and that in the end the senate was crushed under the weight of the huge problems of empire.
The Subduing of Italy
In the 4th cent. B.C., Rome extended its influence over W Latium and S Etruria; during the course of that century and the next, Rome came in full contact with Greek culture, which modified Roman life tremendously. The idea of the old Roman courage and morality, however, was kept alive by such staunch conservatives as Cato the Elder. The power of the city may be inferred from the tremendous impression the sack of Rome (390 B.C.) by the Gauls made in subsequent times.
The Samnites were subdued in the wars dated conventionally 343-341 B.C., 326-304 B.C., and 298-290 B.C., and the inhabitants of Picenum, Umbria, Apulia, Lucania, and Etruria were pacified. The Roman policy in subduing Italy was that of a master toward slaves. Tarentum, besieged by the Romans, called for the aid of Pyrrhus of Epirus; he won victories at Heraclea (280 B.C.) and Asculum (279 B.C.), but after a dispute with his Italian allies he returned to Greece, leaving the Romans masters of central and S Italy.
Conquests Overseas and to the East
Rome, previously a continental power, began to look seaward in the 3d cent. B.C. Sicily, a granary of the ancient world, was an obvious goal, but Rome's rapid conquests could not continue there without meeting the like ambitions of Carthage, which ruled the W Mediterranean. The Punic Wars were thus inevitable, and in this titanic struggle the fate of Carthage and the destiny of Rome were decided. Although Carthage had the great general Hannibal, Rome fought with the resources of Italy behind it and had such leaders as Scipio Africanus Major. Rome gained from the Punic Wars dominion over Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the northern shores of Africa, indisputable hegemony in the Mediterranean, and an insatiable desire for conquest.
With Carthage humbled, the Roman republic turned its attention eastward. Philip V of Macedon was defeated after two campaigns (215-205 B.C., 200-197 B.C.), and Antiochus III of Syria was conquered at Magnesia (190 B.C.); eventually the defeat of Perseus (171-168 B.C.) made Macedonia a Roman province. Greece did not become a Roman province, but the brief opposition of the Achaean League was disposed of, and the Greeks became subject to Rome. Egypt acknowledged vassalship to the republic in 168 B.C.
Effects of Expansion
The rapid expansion of Roman dominion, however, had terrible effects at home. The provinces were governed by the senate for the benefit not of Rome but of the senatorial class; enormous wealth (by graft and by trade) flowed into the hands of the senators, who used it exclusively to their own advantage. The equites (see knight), a class of financiers, came into its own through management of imperial trade. Class dissension was rife, and in spite of agrarian laws the masses were daily more dissatisfied. The slaves in Sicily rebelled twice (c.134-132 B.C., c.104-101 B.C.), and the Gracchus brothers in a political victory tried to make the populace more powerful, but such defiance was to no avail. Massacres and incredible barbarities disposed of the slaves' restlessness, and the Gracchi were assassinated (133 and 121 B.C.).
Marius defeated Jugurtha (106 B.C.) and the Cimbri and the Teutons (101 B.C.), and he heralded a new era by definitively introducing Roman arms into Transalpine Gaul. Rome was forced by the Social War (90-88 B.C.) to extend citizenship widely in Italy, but the republic was nevertheless doomed. A slave revolt led by Spartacus was put down mercilessly. Marius, the idol of the populace, used proscription to rid himself of his foes, but Sulla, a conservative, destroyed Marius' party by the same method.
Julius Caesar
After Sulla's retirement his lieutenant Pompey emerged as a popular champion. He abolished some of Sulla's reactionary measures, suppressed Mediterranean piracy, and made himself master of Rome. His defeat of Mithradates VI brought Pontus, Syria, and Phoenicia under Roman dominion.
On Pompey's return from the East, he found an ally for his ambitions in Julius Caesar, a popular democratic leader of the best patrician blood. With Marcus Licinius Crassus to furnish the funds, Pompey and Caesar formed the First Triumvirate (60 B.C.), and Caesar departed to make himself immortal in the Gallic Wars. Within ten years Caesar and Pompey fell out; Pompey joined the senatorial party, and Caesar (as the champion of the people and of republican legality) led his devoted army against Pompey. Pharsalus was the result (48 B.C.), and Caesar was master of Rome.
He governed through the old institutions, with wisdom and vigor. His territorial additions were the most important ever made, for his conquest and organization of Gaul placed Rome in the role of civilizer of barbarians as well as ruler of the older world. The age of Caesar was a great period in Roman culture, and the cosmopolitan Roman was considered the ideal. Greek was the language of much of the empire, and Greek literature became fashionable. Even more influential was Greek thought, which served to destroy Roman religion and to open the Romans to the Eastern cults, which were enormously popular for years. Cicero, an urbane lawyer and philosopher of broad culture, was typical of the period.
At the death (44 B.C.) of Caesar, the territories ruled by Rome included Spain (except part of the northwest), Gaul, Italy, part of Illyria, Macedonia, Greece, W Asia Minor, Bithynia, Pontus, Cilicia, Syria, Cyrenaica, Numidia, and the islands of the sea, and Rome completely controlled Egypt and Palestine. The rule of Caesar marked an epoch, for it completed the destruction of the republic and laid the foundations of the empire.
The Roman Empire
Augustus and the Pax Romana
Caesar's assassination brought anarchy, out of which the Second Triumvirate emerged with the rule of Octavian (later Augustus), Antony, and Lepidus. Octavian was Caesar's nephew, ward, and heir, and his true successor. At Actium (31 B.C.) he defeated Antony and Cleopatra and made the empire one. No change was made in the government, but Octavian received from the senate the title Augustus and from the people life tribuneship; this, with the governorship of all the provinces conferred by the senate, made him the real ruler. He was called imperator [commander] and princeps [leader] and is usually considered the first Roman emperor. (For a list of the Roman Emperors from Augustus to the fall of Rome and the years they reigned, see the table entitled Rulers of the Roman Empire.)
Augustus organized provincial government and the army, rebuilt Rome, and patronized the arts and letters. His rule began a long period (200 years) of peace, called the Pax Romana. During this time the Roman Empire was the largest it would ever be; its boundaries included Armenia, middle Mesopotamia, the Arabian desert, the Red Sea, Nubia, the Sahara, the Moroccan mountain mass, the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea, Scotland, the North Sea, the Rhine, the Danube, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus. Augustus' chief additions to the empire were a strip along the North Sea W of the Elbe and part of the Danubian area.
The blessings of peace were great for the empire. The extensive system of Roman roads made transportation easier than it was again to be until the development of railroads. A postal service was developed closely tied in with the organization of the army. Commerce and industry were greatly developed, particularly by sea, over which grain ships carried food for Rome and the West from the ports of northern Africa. The Roman Empire became under Augustus one great nation. The enlarged view of the world made a great impression on Rome, where literary and artistic interests were of importance, although nearly always tending to imitation of Greece and of the East.
Augustus died A.D. 14 and was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius; his general Germanicus Caesar fought fruitlessly in Germany. Caligula, who followed, was a cruel tyrant (A.D. 37-A.D. 41); he was succeeded by Claudius I (A.D. 41-A.D. 54), who was dominated by his wives, but during his rule half of Britain was conquered (A.D. 43). In his time Thrace, Lydia, and Judaea were made Roman provinces. His stepson Nero (A.D. 54-A.D. 68) was an unparalleled tyrant. In his reign occurred the great fire of Rome (A.D. 64), attributed (probably falsely) to Nero; it burnt everything between the Caelian, the Palatine, and the Esquiline, but it was a boon to the city, for Nero moved the population to the right bank of the Tiber, then very thinly populated, and rebuilt the region with broader streets and great buildings.
At that time an entirely new element, Christianity, made itself felt in Rome. On Nero's orders a barbarous persecution took place in which many Christians died, among them St. Peter and St. Paul. Throughout the Roman Empire the Christians expanded steadily for the next centuries. Their conflict with the empire, which brought on them continual persecution, was chiefly a result of the Christian refusal to offer divine honors to the emperors. But Christianity penetrated the army and the royal household in spite of the constant danger of detection and persecution. There were many periods in the first three centuries when Christians worshiped openly, even in Rome, where the catacombs housed not only graves but also churches.
With Nero the Julio-Claudian line ended. There was a brief struggle (see Galba; Otho; Vitellius) before Vespasian (A.D. 69-A.D. 79) became emperor. Under him his son Titus destroyed Jerusalem (A.D. 70); Titus then briefly succeeded his father. After his mild, rather benign rule, his brother Domitian (A.D. 81-A.D. 96), a despot and persecutor of Christians, gained the empire. In Domitian's reign Agricola conquered Britain almost entirely. Domitian was unsuccessful in his dealings with the Daci and finally bought them off. After Nerva came Trajan (A.D. 98-A.D. 117), one of the greatest of emperors. Trajan undertook great public works, defeated the Daci and established Roman colonies there (in what is now modern Romania), and pushed the eastern borders past Armenia and Mesopotamia.
Trajan's successor, Hadrian, withdrew Roman rule to the Euphrates and in Britain built his wall (Hadrian's Wall) to hold back the barbarians who constantly threatened that fast-developing province. He also reorganized the senate and the army. Roman armies were then seldom seen far from the boundaries of the empire, and life continued throughout the Roman world in peace and quiet. Italy was sinking into a purely provincial state, although many emperors made attempts to make it a special country. The successors of Hadrian were Antoninus Pius (138-161) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180), who ruled in what is commonly called the Golden Age of the empire.
The Empire Declines
With Commodus (180-192) the decline of the empire is usually said to have begun. The age of the Praetorians was then at hand, when the rise and fall of emperors was determined by this elite corps of soldiers. Septimius Severus (193-211) was unusually able for his period; he campaigned with success against the Parthians and against the Picts of N Britain. His son Caracalla is noteworthy for extending Roman citizenship to all free men of the empire and for the famous baths named after him.
Emperors succeeded one another rapidly in the 3d cent.: Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus, Philip (Philip the Arabian), and Decius among them. Decius was one of the most violent persecutors of Christians; he fell fighting the Goths, first of the Germans, who were eventually to overwhelm the empire. In 260 the emperor Valerian was captured by the Persians, and the empire fell into anarchy. The provinces suffered from increasingly bad government as well as from a pestilence that carried off half the population. Claudius II (268-70) revived Roman fortunes somewhat, while Aurelian (270-75) overthrew the Palmyrene kingdom of Zenobia.
In 284, Diocletian was made emperor by the army. He was a reformer of government and of the social order, but only one of his efforts was successful. This was the division of the empire into four political sections, two eastern and two western. There were to be two Augusti and two Caesars.
The division of East and West was resumed after the death (337) of Constantine I, who moved the capital to Byzantium, renamed Constantinople. By the Edict of Milan (313), Constantine granted universal religious tolerance, thus placing Christianity on the same footing as the other religions. He divided the empire administratively into prefectures, dioceses, and provinces; the bishops thus gained great influence and shared in the authority of the civil administration. There was a brief resurgence of paganism under Julian the Apostate, but Christianity was securely established.
On the death of Jovian, Julian's successor, Valentinian I (364-75) ruled the Western Empire; Valentinian II (375-92) succeeded him. After the death (395) of Theodosius I the empire was permanently divided into Eastern (see Byzantine Empire) and Western, and Rome rapidly lost its political importance.
Under the emperors, Rome had been the center of the world. It must have presented a splendid, although heterogeneous, appearance. Little remained of the original city, for the emperors had replanned it to glorify themselves as well as the city. Parts of the Aurelian Wall still stand. On the Capitoline were the citadel (the arx) and the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; the Palatine was the site of the palaces of Augustus and Tiberius (the word palace derives from the hill); the palace of Nero and Trajan's baths were on the southern slopes of the Esquiline. South of the Palatine was the Circus Maximus, where the famous chariot races were held. The old Roman Forum (see forum), extending from the Palatine almost to the Colosseum, remained the center of the city; northwest of it were the Emperors' Fora, with many fine public buildings, and the Temple of Peace. On the Martian Field were Pompey's theater, the Circus Flaminius, the Pantheon (see under pantheon), and the baths of Agrippa and Nero. Across the Tiber was Nero's circus, where St. Peter's now stands; Hadrian's tomb, now known as the Castel Sant' Angelo, has survived as a major landmark. The largest of the many public baths were those of Caracalla, near the Appian Way.
At its height, imperial Rome counted well over a million inhabitants. It was well policed, sanitation was excellent, and a fire-fighting force of seven brigades was maintained. Nineteen imposing aqueducts, of which many remains are extant, supplied the city with water. Among the rich such luxuries as central heating and running water were not unknown. The indigent (c.200,000) were cared for at public expense. Not until the 18th cent. were luxury and technical proficiency on a comparable scale to return to any European city.
Decline, once it began, came quickly, however. Honorius (395-423) made Ravenna the capital of the West; other emperors chose Milan and Trier (Treves), where they were nearer the border to check Germanic attacks. The West sank into anarchy, and Italy was ravaged by invaders. Alaric I took Rome in 410, and Gaiseric conquered it in 455. Attila was kept from sacking it, supposedly through the efforts of the pope, Leo I (St. Leo the Great). In this general disintegration the popes, originally the bishops of Rome, greatly increased their power and prestige, thus restoring to Rome in the religious field the importance it had lost in the political.
In 476 the last emperor of the West, appropriately called Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Goths under Odoacer; this date is commonly accepted as the end of the West Roman Empire, or Western Empire. The so-called Dark Ages (now usually called the Early Middle Ages; see Middle Ages) that followed in Western Europe could not eradicate the profound imprint left by the Roman civilization. Roman law is still alive; the Romance languages are but modifications of Roman speech. Roman Catholicism for nearly 12 centuries was the only religion and the main cultural force of Western Europe.
The fall of Rome marked no abrupt ending of an era, for the barbarians that filled the gap left by the disappearance of the old order were quick in accepting and adapting what vital elements remained of it. The survival of the East Roman Empire, or Eastern Empire, and the creation of the Holy Roman Empire showed how much vitality was left in the imperial ideal. Italy itself, however, did not recover from the fall of Rome until the 19th cent.
Medieval Rome
The history of Rome in the Middle Ages, bewildering in its detail, is essentially that of two institutions, the papacy and the commune of Rome. In the 5th cent. the Goths ruled Italy from Ravenna, their capital. Odoacer and Theodoric the Great kept the old administration of Rome under Roman law, with Roman officials. The city, whose population was to remain less than 50,000 throughout the Middle Ages, suffered severely from the wars between the Goths and Byzantines. In 552, Narses conquered Rome for Byzantium and became the first of the exarchs (viceroys) who ruled Italy from Ravenna. Under Byzantine rule commerce declined, and the senate and consuls disappeared.
Pope Gregory I (590-604), one of the greatest Roman leaders of all time, began to emancipate Rome from the exarchs. Sustained by the people, the popes soon exercised greater power in Rome than did the imperial governors, and many secular buildings were converted into churches. The papal elections were, for the next 12 centuries, the main events in Roman history. Two other far-reaching developments (7th-8th cent.) were the division of the people into four classes (clergy, nobility, soldiers, and the lowest class) and the emergence of the Papal States.
The coronation (800) at Rome of Charlemagne as emperor of the West ended all question of Byzantine suzerainty over Rome, but it also inaugurated an era characterized by the ambiguous relationship between the emperors and the popes. That era was punctuated by visits to the city by the German kings, to be crowned emperor or to secure the election of a pope to their liking or to impose their will on the pope. In 846, Rome was sacked by the Arabs; the Leonine walls were built to protect the city, but they did not prevent the frequent occupations and plunderings of the city by Christian powers.
By the 10th cent., Rome and the papacy had reached their lowest point. Papal elections, originally exercised by the citizens of Rome, had come under the control of the great noble families, among whom the Frangipani and Pierleone families and later the Orsini and the Colonna were the most powerful. Each of these would rather have torn Rome apart than allowed the other families to gain undue influence. They built fortresses in the city (often improvised transformations of the ancient palaces and theaters) and ruled Rome from them.
From 932 to 954, Alberic, a very able man, governed Rome firmly and restored its self-respect, but after his death and after the proceedings that accompanied the coronation of Otto I as emperor, Rome relapsed into chaos, and the papal dignity once more became the pawn of the emperors and of local feudatories. Contending factions often elected several popes at once. Gregory VII reformed these abuses and strongly claimed the supremacy of the church over the municipality, but he himself ended as an exile, Emperor Henry IV having taken Rome in 1084. The Normans under Robert Guiscard came to rescue Gregory and thoroughly sacked the city on the same occasion (1084).
Papal authority was challenged in the 12th cent. by the communal movement. A commune was set up (1144-55), led by Arnold of Brescia, but it was subdued by the intervention of Emperor Frederick I. Finally, a republic under papal patronage was established, headed by an elected senator. However, civil strife continued between popular and aristocratic factions and between Guelphs and Ghibellines. The commune made war to subdue neighboring cities, for it pretended to rule over the Papal States, particularly the duchy of Rome, which included Latium and parts of Tuscany. Innocent III controlled the government of the city, but it regained its autonomy after the accession of Emperor Frederick II. Later in the 13th cent. foreign senators began to be chosen; among them were Brancaleone degli Andalò (1252-58) and Charles I of Naples.
During the "Babylonian captivity" of the popes at Avignon (1309-78) Rome was desolate, economically ruined, and in constant turmoil. Cola di Rienzi became the champion of the people and tried to revive the ancient Roman institutions, as envisaged also by Petrarch and Dante; in 1347 he was made tribune, but his dreams were doomed. Cardinal Albornoz temporarily restored the papal authority over Rome, but the Great Schism (1378-1417) intervened. Once more a republic was set up. In 1420, Martin V returned to Rome, and with him began the true and effective dominion of the popes in Rome.
Renaissance and Modern Rome
A last effort at restoring the Roman republic failed utterly in 1453. The history of Rome became more than ever that of the papacy. The successors of Martin V in the 15th cent. and the first half of the 16th cent. were chiefly interested in increasing the temporal power of the papacy, in patronizing the arts and letters, in beautifying the city, and in raising the fortunes of themselves and their relatives. The moral tone of the papal court was a scandal to Christendom and contributed to the success of the Reformation.
Rome during the Renaissance
The period of the great popes of the Renaissance-Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III-was one of sensuous splendor. Among the countless artists and architects who served the papal court, Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Domenico Fontana were the chief creators of Rome as it is today. Saint Peter's Church and the frescoed Sistine Chapel in the Vatican are outstanding examples of the artistic resources of Renaissance Rome. The popes also played a leading part in the Italian Wars of the 16th cent. As a result of Clement VII's alliance with Francis I of France, Rome was stormed (1527) by the army of Emperor Charles V and subjected to a thorough plundering.
The triumph of the Counter Reformation in the late 16th cent. restored dignity and moral power to the papal court and gave the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) great influence. Although the power of the pope was established as absolute, more religious tolerance (particularly toward the Jews) could be found at Rome than in many other capitals of Europe. The city continued to prosper and to benefit by the influx of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims (see jubilee). The great creative wave of the Renaissance was largely spent, but the noble baroque monuments-notably those of Bernini-that were erected in the 17th and early 18th cent. added to the grandiose harmony of the city. The splendor of religious ceremonies, as well as the encouragement given by the popes to art, music, classical and archaeological studies, and the restoration of ancient monuments, continued to make Rome a center of world culture.
Napoleon to the Present
When, in 1796, French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Papal States, a truce was bought by Pope Pius VI, and many art treasures passed into French possession. In 1798 the French occupied Rome, deported the pope, and proclaimed Rome a republic. Pius VII reentered Rome in 1800, but in 1808 Napoleon reoccupied the city and in 1809 annexed it to France. Papal rule was restored in 1814.
Pope Pius IX, who ruled during a crucial period (1846-78), yielded to liberal demands and granted a constitution. However, disorders in 1848 caused his flight to Gaeta, and once more Rome became a republic, under the leadership of Giuseppe Mazzini. French troops intervened, defeated the republican forces under Giuseppe Garibaldi, and restored Pius IX, who made no further attempts at liberalism.
The Italian kingdom, proclaimed in 1862, included most of the former Papal States but not Rome, which remained under papal rule as a virtual protectorate of Napoleon III. Napoleon's fall in 1870 made possible the occupation of Rome by Italian troops, and, in 1871, Rome became the capital of Italy. Pius IX and his successors, however, did not recognize their loss of temporal sovereignty. The conflict between pope and king-or Vatican and Quirinal, as the antagonists were designated because of the location of their palaces-was not solved until the conclusion (1929) of the Lateran Treaty, which gave the pope sovereignty over Vatican City.
With the Fascist march on Rome (1922) Benito Mussolini came to power. In World War II, Rome fell to the Allies on June 4, 1944. The postwar years were marked by a vigorous economic, artistic, and intellectual revival. The year 1950 was designated a holy year by Pope Pius XII, and Rome, more than ever the spiritual capital of Catholicism, was host to many thousands of pilgrims. In 1960 the Olympics were held in Rome.
Bibliography
Ancient Rome
General histories of ancient Rome are countless. Among the ancient histories, that of Livy is the only comprehensive work. Other great Roman historians were Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Suetonius, Polybius, Dio Cassius, and Josephus. The works of Mommsen and Edward Gibbon are monumental. General works on ancient Rome include those of J. B. Bury, Guglielmo Ferrero, Tenney Frank, and Michael Rostovtzeff.
See F. F. Abbott, History and Description of Roman Political Institutions (3d ed. 1911, repr. 1963); Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (tr. 1940, repr. 1962); R. H. Barrow, The Romans (1949, repr. 1964); C. G. Starr, Civilization and the Caesars (1954, repr. 1965); Max Cary, History of Rome (2d ed. 1957); H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World (3d ed. 1961); E. T. Salmon, A History of the Roman World (6th ed. 1968); F. W. Wallbank, Awful Revolution: The Decline of the Roman Empire in the West (2d ed. 1969); J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Rome: The Study of an Empire (1970); P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (1970); Donald Dudley, The Romans (1970); M. T. W. Arnheim, The Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman Empire (1972); Jacques Heurgon, The Rise of Rome to 264 B.C. (1973); Georgina Masson, A Concise History of Republican Rome (1973); Albino Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines (1974); Allan Massie, The Caesars (1984); Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture (1987); Ernest Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome (2 vol., 1989); T. J. Cornell, Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (1000-264 B.C.) (1995).
Medieval Rome
See Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (8 vol. in 13, 1903-12; repr. 1968); Alain de Boüard, Le Régime politique et les institutions de Rome au moyen âge (1920); Peter Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages (1970); Ferdinand Gregorovius, Rome and Medieval Culture (1973).
Renaissance and Modern Rome
See bibliographies at Renaissance and Italy.
History 1450-1789:
Rome |
From 1500 to 1789, Rome's population grew from about 50,000 to over 160,000. A small civic government maintained some autonomy well into the seventeenth century, but the papacy increasingly controlled local and regional administration, even as its own role in European politics declined. As the center of Catholic Christendom, Rome remained the focal point for the church hierarchy, for numerous religious orders, and for pilgrims. From the 1540s on, concern for doctrinal orthodoxy circumscribed written and artistic expression, but for another two centuries the city of the popes remained a site of cultural creativity and accomplishment, particularly in architecture.
Economy and Government
In 1500, papal revenues still came primarily from dioceses and church landholdings throughout Europe. After the Protestant Reformation diminished that source, the popes relied more upon heavy taxation of their territories in central Italy, known as the Papal States. A funded debt established in 1526 helped rationalize the curial economy. By 1600, Rome's administration of its territories was arguably as sophisticated as that of any other European state, but its failure to develop new sources of wealth meant reliance upon deficit spending and foreign patronage. The economy of the city beyond the Curia, built largely around the annual influx of pilgrims, perennially lacked a strong industrial or agricultural base. Bad harvests could readily lead to famines, as happened in 1763–1764.
Whereas sixteenth-century popes such as Julius II (reigned 1503–1513) and Paul III (reigned 1534–1549) engaged in wars with powerful Roman families such as the Colonna, over time the local nobles were subsumed into the church hierarchy. A civic government, the Senate and People of Rome, retained some judicial powers and provided a forum for rallying public opinion. It had influence particularly during periods of vacant see (i.e., between popes). But by 1600 all top state officials were churchmen: a cardinal-chamberlain (camerlengo) headed administration of the papacy's temporal domain, with cardinal-legates governing different regions and a cardinal serving as secretary of state. Thereafter, Roman nobles played an essentially ceremonial role, except to the extent that family members obtained high curial offices.
Foreign Relations
By 1500, Italian politics were being transformed by the presence of French and Spanish armies. Pope Julius II played the two against each other while strengthening his economic and political hold on the Papal States. By the mid-1520s, however, the might of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, united in the person of Charles V (ruled 1519–1556), became decisive. Clement VII (reigned 1523–1534) sought intermittently to form alliances to contain imperial power on the peninsula, but the League of Cognac (formed 22 May 1526), in which the pope joined forces with Venice and France, was too disunified in purpose to prevent an imperial army from sacking Rome on 6 May 1527. Clement VII ultimately made peace with Charles V, and he officially crowned Charles emperor in Bologna in February 1530.
Thereafter, Spanish sovereigns often proved critical in defending Rome and in furthering papal goals beyond Italy. Paul IV (reigned 1555–1559) bucked this trend, forming with France an alliance designed to drive the Spaniards from Italy, but the strategy backfired when an imperial army under the duke of Alba encamped near Rome in 1557, forcing the pope to make peace. French defeats soon led to the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), following which Spain enjoyed a uniquely privileged relationship with Rome: Spanish kings exerted influence in the papal court and gained control over substantial church revenues in Spain. In turn, the kings generously endowed religious institutions in Rome and provided military support to the papacy. Meanwhile, the Vatican diplomatic service grew more complex and systematic, especially under Gregory XIII (reigned 1572–1585) and Clement VIII (reigned 1592–1605), and it came under official control of cardinals.
By the 1620s, the balance of power between Spain and France shifted temporarily in the direction of the latter, and Urban VIII (reigned 1623–1644) was elected pope with strong support of French cardinals. Spain remained influential throughout the century, particularly during the pontificate of Alexander VII (reigned 1655–1667). But following the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War, religion became sharply less important in European politics, and so Rome ceased to be as critical to dynastic strategies.
The Urban Landscape
Although the building of Renaissance Rome was well under way by 1500, Pope Julius II gave it added impetus. Seeking to make the city suitably dignified for his ambitions, he sponsored construction projects including the Via Giulia and St. Peter's Basilica (begun 1506). Paul III enhanced the fortifications of the Vatican, employed Michelangelo to restore the city capitol (the Campidoglio), and saw to the construction of major urban thoroughfares. Subsequent pontiffs, notably Sixtus V (1585–1590), further edified and embellished the city. Classical models inspired both urban design and the building of suburban villas with gardens.
The seventeenth century saw the addition of massive baroque structures, many designed by Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). Commissioned in 1638 to build the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Borromini later designed its imposing curved facade. Bernini's projects included overseeing the completion of St. Peter's and designing the colonnade that surrounds its square (completed 1667).
In the eighteenth century, elaborate new facades for churches and other buildings transformed the appearance of existing squares and streets. Wealthy families such as the Corsini and the Doria Pamphili commissioned private palaces whose facades vied for attention in the public theater of the city. There was more practical construction, as well: some structures were divided into private apartments of varying size to house the burgeoning ranks of mid-level papal officials, and new buildings were erected for oratories, monasteries, convents, and charitable institutions. By the later eighteenth century, construction was curtailed amidst economic crises, but there was by then a dense core of buildings in central Rome, surrounded on the outskirts by the villas of the wealthy.
Religious and Cultural Leadership
Although the Protestant Reformation cut into the papacy's prestige and revenues, Rome remained the world center of the Catholic faith. Starting in the pontificate of Paul III, it was also a center of reform. When the papacy convened the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which enacted extensive doctrinal and institutional reforms, new religious groups had already emerged, including the Capuchins (1528) and the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits (1540). The latter's zealous and at times controversial promotion of the faith, which could threaten secular rulers' prerogatives, led in 1773 to its temporary suppression by Pope Clement XIV (reigned 1769–1774). Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books (first promulgated in 1559) limited the scope of acceptable theological expression but did not entirely stifle other forms of intellectual creativity. The University of Rome, strong before the Sack of 1527, had to shut down for eight years. After reopening, it had mainly regional importance, educating lawyers, mid-level papal and civil officials, and some doctors. Bologna remained the premier university in papal territories. Within Rome, religious orders' schools, especially the Jesuits' Collegio Romano (established 1551), dominated theological education. Literary, scientific, and archaeological culture flourished in the later sixteenth century and beyond, when private collections of manuscripts and antiquities became increasingly fashionable. The constraints of orthodoxy limited radical religious expression, at times forcefully, as in the case of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. Philosophical, scientific, and literary pursuits that did not directly contravene church dogma flourished, especially in academies such as that of the Lincei (1603–1630) and the Arcadia, founded in 1690 by scholars who had enjoyed the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden (d. 1689), who had converted to Catholicism.
The early sixteenth century, a peak period for artistic creativity in Rome, encompassed Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–1512) and Raphael's work in the Vatican stanze (begun 1509). Later influential contributions included Michelangelo's Last Judgment (completed 1541), and around 1600 Rome still drew major painters like Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) and Caravaggio (1571–1610). Achievements in architecture reached new heights the following century in the works of Borromini and Bernini, the latter of whom also made enduring contributions to baroque statuary, notably his Ecstasy of St. Theresa (1652) in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, and the Fountain of the Four Rivers (1651) in the Piazza Navona. In the eighteenth century, public spaces were redesigned with an eye to theatricality. Major projects included the Spanish Steps (1723–1726), the Piazza Sant' Ignazio (1727–1735), and Nicola Salvi's design for the Trevi fountain (mid-1730s), which still today dominates its piazza.
By 1789, Rome had ceased to be a center even of architectural innovation. Still, prints designed and compiled by the architect and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) helped disseminate abroad an appreciation for the city's cultural riches, as did its distinction as the final stop on European aristocrats' grand tour. Although Rome's cultural role had waned, the Renaissance, Reformation, and baroque ages would bequeath a rich legacy to future generations, much as the culture of antiquity had done for them.
Bibliography
Dandelet, Thomas James. Spanish Rome, 1500–1700. New Haven and London, 2001.
Gross, Hanns. Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1990.
Partner, Peter. Renaissance Rome, 1500–1559: A Portrait of a Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976.
Signorotto, Gianvittorio, and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, eds. Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2002.
—KENNETH GOUWENS
Geography:
Rome |
Capital of Italy, largest city in the country, and seat of the
- Rome was the capital of the Roman
Republic (fourth century to first century b.c.) and the Roman Empire (first century b.c. to fifth century a.d.), whose domains, at their height, spread from Great Britain to present-day Iran and included all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. - In a.d. 800, Rome again became associated with imperial power when Charlemagne was crowned there as the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
- Rome was proclaimed capital of Italy in 1871, after Italian forces took control of the city from the
pope . - It is called the “Eternal City.”
- “All roads lead to Rome” is a well-known proverb.
- Ancient Rome is often referred to as the “City of Seven Hills” because it was built on seven hills surrounded by a line of fortifications.
- Its landmarks include the Colosseum, the Appian Way, the Pantheon, the Forum, the Arch of Constantine, and Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.
Weather:
rome |
Dialing Code:
The telephone dialing code for: Rome, Italy |
The country code is: 39
The city code is: 06
Local Time:
Rome, Italy |
Magical practice was widespread among the ancient Romans. Magic was integral to their worship and operated as an organized system of magical rites for communal ends. Magic formed a foundation for thought and outlook upon the world, entered daily life, and directly affected many laws and customs. This ingrained tendency eventually developed into a broad polytheistic system, which led during bad times, especially in the later years of the Empire, to a frenzied search for new gods, borrowed from various countries Rome had conquered. In times of misfortune and disaster, the Romans were always ready to utilize a non-Roman deity if his or her favors promised more than those of their own deities.
Although there was a strong conservative element in the populous, and the "custom of the elders" was strongly upheld by the priestly fraternity, this usually gave way before the momentary impulses of the people. Thus, as a rock shows its geological history by its differing strata, so the theogony of the Roman gods tells its tale of the race that conceived it. There are prehistoric nature deities, borrowed from indigenous tribes; gods of the Sabines, from whom the young colony stole its wives; gods of the Etruscans, and of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Persians. The temple of Jupiter on the capitol contained the altar of an ancient deity, a stone-god, Terminus, the spirit of boundaries. In the temple of Diana of the Grove, a fountain nymph was worshiped. Additional instances of this kind abound.
Belief in Spirits
In addition to the gods, the spirits needed to be propitiated. Indeed the objects offered to the Roman for veneration were seemingly numberless. Apuleius gave a description of popular supernaturalism when he told of a country road where one might meet an altar wreathed with flowers, a cave hung with garlands, an oak tree laden with horns of cattle, a hill marked by fences as sacred, a log rough-hewn into shape, an altar of turf smoking with libations, or a stone anointed with oil.
Every single action of man's daily life had a presiding spirit, as did commerce and husbandry. Ednea was concerned with eating and Potina with drinking. Other spirits oversaw departures, travel, approaching, and homecoming. In commerce Mercurius reigned as the spirit of gain and Pecunia of money. Farmers had to pay attention to the spirits of cutting, grinding, sowing, and bee-keeping. A deity presided over streets and highways; Cloacina served as goddess of the sewers, while the lowly Mephitis was the spirit of bad smells. Spirits of evil, such as Robigo, the spirit of mildew, also had to be propitiated by pacificatory rites. In Rome there was an altar to fever and bad fortune.
From the country came Silvanus, god of farms and woods, and his fauns and nymphs with Picus, the woodpecker god who fed the twins Romulus and Remus with berries. Each deity or spirit possessed some influence, and had to be approached with proper rites. The names of these spirits were inscribed on tablets, indigitamenta, which were in the charge of the pontiffs (priests), who thus knew which spirit to evoke according to need. Most of these spirits were animistic in origin.
Rites and Worship
Worship in ancient Rome consisted largely of magical rites destined to propitiate the powers controlling human beings, to bring people into touch with those powers, to renew life and the land that supported it, and to stop that process of degeneration constantly set in motion by evil influences. Everything connected with worship typified this restoration. The priests, who represented the life of the community, were therefore bound by strict observances from endangering it in any way. Rules as to attire, eating, and touch were numerous. Sacrifices were systematized according to the end desired and the deity invoked.
Worship instructions designated the age and gender of all animal sacrifices; oxen were to be offered to Jupiter and Mars, and swine to Juno, Ceres the corn-goddess, and Silvanus. At one shrine, a pregnant cow was sacrificed and the ashes of the unborn young were considered to be of special magical efficacy. Even human sacrifice existed within historical times. After the battle of Cannæ, the Romans sought to divert misfortune by burying two Greeks alive in the cattle-market, while in the time of Julius Cæsar, two men were put to death with sacrificial solemnities by the pontiff and flamen of Mars. Again, in the time of Cicero and Horace, boys were killed for magical purposes.
Fire possessed great virtue and was held sacred in the worship of Vesta, in early belief Vesta being the fire itself; it presided over the family hearth; it restored purity and conferred protection.
Blood had the same quality and, smeared on the face of the god, symbolized and brought about the oneness of the deity with the community. On great occasions the statue of Jupiter was treated thus: the priests of Bellona made incisions in their shoulders and sprinkled the blood upon the image. The face of a triumphant general was painted with vermilion to represent blood.
Kneeling and prostration brought one into direct contact with the earth of the sacred place.
Music was also used as a species of incantation, probably deriving its origin in sounds made to drive away evil spirits. Dancing too was of magical efficacy. In Rome there were colleges of dancers for the purposes of religion, youths who danced in solemn measure about the altars, who, in the sacred month of Mars, took part in the festivals and were sent throughout the city dancing and singing. One authority stated that there were four kinds of "holy solemnity"—sacrifice, sacred banquets, public festivals, and games. Theatrical performances also belonged to this category, in one instance being used as a means of diverting a pestilence.
Sacred banquets were often decreed by the Senate as thanksgiving to the gods. Tables were spread with a sumptuous repast in the public places and were first offered to the statues of the deities seated around.
The festivals were numerous, all of a magical and symbolic nature. In the spring there was the Parilia, when fires of straw were lighted, through which persons passed to be purified, and the Cerealia, celebrated with sacrifice and offerings to Ceres, the corn-goddess, and followed by banquets. The Lupercalia, the festival of Faunus, was held in February and symbolized the wakening of spring and growth. Goats were slain as sacrifice and with their blood the Luperci, youths clad in skins, smeared their faces. They took thongs made of the goatskin and, laughing wildly, rushed through the city striking the crowd, Roman matrons believing that the blows thus received rendered them prolific.
Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth, also had her festival, the Matronalia, celebrated by the women of Rome. During festivals of the dead, the door leading to the other world was opened, the stone removed from its entrance in the Comitium, and the dark spirits who came forth were appeased with offerings. On these days, three times in the year, when the gods of gloom were abroad, complete cessation from all work was decreed. No battle could be fought nor ship set sail, neither could a man and woman marry.
To the sacred games were taken the statues of the gods in gorgeous procession, chariots of silver, companies of priests, and youths singing and dancing. The gods viewed the games reclining on couches.
The chariot races also partook of the nature of rites. After the races, in the Field of Mars, came one of the most important Roman rites, the sacrifice of the October Horse. The righthand horse of the victorious team was sacrificed to Mars, and the tail of the animal, running with blood, carried to the Altar of the Regia. The blood was stored in the temple of Vesta until the following spring and used in the sacrifice of the festival of Parilia. The sacrifice was essentially magical, all citizens present being purified by the blood-sprinkling and bonfire.
The Roman outlook upon life was largely colored by magic. Bodily foes had their counterpart in the unseen world— wandering spirits of the dead, spirits of evil, the anger of innocently offended deities, and the menace of the evil eye. Portents and prodigies were everywhere. In the heavens, strange things might be seen. The sun had been known to double, even treble itself, its light turn to blood, or a magical halo to appear round the orb. Thunder and lightning were always fraught with presage. Jove was angered when he opened the heavens and hurled his bolts to earth.
Phantoms, too, hovered amid the clouds. Upon the Campagna, the gods were observed in conflict, and afterward tracks of the combatants were visible across the plain. Unearthly voices were heard amid the mountains and groves and cries of portent sounded within the temples.
Blood haunted the Roman imagination. Sometimes it was said to have covered the land as a mantle, the standing corn dyed with blood, the rivers and fountains flowing with it, while walls and statues were covered with a bloody sweat.
The flight and song of birds might foretell the decrees of Fate; unappeased spirits of the dead were known to lurk near and steal away the souls of men, who then died. All these happenings were attributable to the gods and spirits, who, if the portent was one of menace, must be propitiated, if one of good fortune, thanked with offerings.
Down to later times, this deep belief in the occurrence of prodigies persisted. When Otho set out for Italy in 69 C.E. , Rome rang with reports of a gigantic phantom rushing forth from the Temple of Juno and of the statue of Julius turning from east to west.
Divination and Augury
Divination was connected with Roman worship. There was a spot on the Capitol from which the augur, with veiled head, read the auspices in the flight of birds. Augurs also accompanied armies and fleets and read the omens before an engagement was entered upon. Divination was also practiced by reading the intestines of animals, by dreams, by divine possession, as in the case of the Oracles, when prophecies were uttered. These had been gathered together in the Sibylline Books and were consulted as oracles by the state. With the worship of fortune were connected the Lots of Praœneste. The questions put to the goddess were answered by means of oaken lots a boy drew from a case made of sacred wood. The fortune-tellers also used a narrow-necked urn that, filled with water, only allowed one lot at a time to rise. Astrologers from Chaldea were also much sought after and were attached to the kingly and noble houses.
Familiar things of everyday life took on magical import. Words and numbers, especially odd ones, were of special significance. The Kalends, Nones, and Ides were so arranged as to fall upon odd days. Touch was binding, and so recognized in the law of Rome, as the grasp of a thing sold, from a slave to a turf of distant estate. Knotting and twisting of thread was injurious, so that women must never pass by cornfields twisting their spindles.
A strange sympathy existed between the trees and humankind, and great honor was paid to the sacred trees of Rome. On the oak tree of Jupiter, the triumphant general hung the shield and arms of his fallen foe, while the hedges about the Temple of Diana at Nemi were covered with votive offerings. The trees also harbored the spirits of the dead, who came forth as dreams to the souls of men. Pliny the Elder stated in this matter: "Trees have a soul since nothing on earth lives without one. They are the temples of spirits and the simple countryside dedicates still a noble tree to some god. The various kinds of trees are sacred to their protecting spirits: the oak to Jupiter, the laurel to Apollo, olive to Minerva, myrtle to Venus, white poplar to Hercules."
These trees therefore partook of the nature of their presiding spirits and it was desirable to bring about communion with their magical influence, as in the spring, when laurel boughs were hung at the doors of the flamens and pontiffs, and in the temple of Vesta, where they remained hanging until the following year. Trees and their leaves were also possessed of healing and purifying value. Laurel was used for the latter quality after triumphs, when the spears and javelins of legionaries were wreathed with its branches to purify them from the blood of the enemy.
Man himself had a presiding spirit, his genius, each woman her "Juno" and the Saturnalia was really a holiday for this "other self." The Roman kept his birthday in honor of his genius. He would offer frankincense, cakes, and unmixed wine on an altar garlanded with flowers while making solemn prayers for the coming year. Cities and villages had their genii.
Beliefs About Death
Death was believed to be the life and soul enticed away by revengeful ghosts, hence death would never occur save by such agencies. The dead therefore must be appeased with offerings or else they wandered abroad working evil among the living.
One manifestation of this belief appeared in Ovid's lines, "Once upon a time the great feast of the dead was not observed and the manes failed to receive the customary gifts, the fruit, the salt, the corn steeped in unmixed wine, the violets. The injured spirits revenged themselves on the living and the city was encircled with the funeral fires of their victims. The townsfolk heard their grandsires complaining in the quiet hours of the night, and told each other how the unsubstantial troop of monstrous specters rising from their tombs, shrieked along the city streets and up and down the fields."
Beans were used in the funeral feasts. They were supposed to harbor the souls of the dead, and the bean-blossom to be inscribed with characters of mourning.
Dreams were considered of great importance by the Romans and many historical instances of prophetic dreams may be found. They were thought to be like birds, the "bronze-colored" hawks; they were also thought to be the souls of human beings visiting others in their sleep or the souls of the dead returning to earth. In Virgil much may be found on this subject. Lucretius tried to find a scientific reason for dreams; Cicero, although writing in a slighting manner of the prevalent belief in these manifestations of sleep, recorded dreams of his own.
Sorcery & Witchcraft
Sorcery in all its forms, from love-magic to death-magic, was rife among all classes, as were necromantic practices. There were charms and spells for everything under the sun. The rain-charm of the pontiffs consisted of the throwing of puppets into the Tiber. The charm against thunderbolts was compounded of onions, hair, and sprats. The charm against an epidemic required the matrons of Rome to sweep the temple-floors with their hair. There were many more charms, including the simple love-charm strung around the neck of the country maiden.
Witches were prevalent. The poets often chose these sinister figures for their subjects, as when Horace described the ghastly rites of two witches in the cemetery of the Esquiline. Under the light of the new moon they crawled about looking for poisonous herbs and bones. They called the specters to a banquet consisting of a black lamb torn to pieces with their teeth, and afterward these phantoms had to answer the questions of the sorceresses.
Witches made images of their victims and prayed to the infernal powers for help; hounds and snakes glided over the ground, the moon turned to blood, and as the images were melted so the lives of the victims ebbed away.
Virgil gives a picture of a sorceress performing love-magic by means of a waxen image of the youth whose love she desired. Lucan, in his Pharsalia, discusses Thessaly, notorious in all ages for sorcery, and drew a terrific figure of Erichtho, a sorceress of illimitable powers, one whom even the gods obeyed, and to whom the forces of earth and heaven were bond-slaves.
Both Nero and his mother Agrippina were reported to have had recourse to the infamous arts of sorcery, while in the New Testament may be found testimony as to these practices in Rome.
The attitude of the cultured class towards magic is illustrated by an illuminating passage to be found in the writings of Pliny the Elder. He states, "The art of magic has prevailed in most ages and in most parts of the globe. Let no one wonder that it has wielded very great authority inasmuch as it embraces three other sources of influence. No one doubts that it took its rise in medicine and sought to cloak itself in the garb of a science more profound and holy than the common run. It added to its tempting promises the force of religion, after which the human race is groping, especially at this time. Further it has brought in the arts of astrology and divination. For everyone desires to know what is to come to him and believes that certainty can be gained by consulting the stars. Having in this way taken captive the feelings of man by a triple chain, it has reached such a pitch that it rules over all the world and in the East, governs the King of Kings."
The Vampire Book:
Vampires in Ancient Rome |
Ancient Rome did not have as developed a mythology of vampirism as did Greece , though the idea was by no means absent. It was not an attribute of the returning dead but of living witches. The idea of a vampirelike entity apparently came from the need to account for the unexpected deaths of infants, a need that had produced the lamiai of ancient Greece. The Romans spoke of the strix, a night demon that attacked infants and drained their blood. The strix was identified with the screech owl. The term survived in Greece as striges in Romania as strigoi and in Italy as strega.
First-century A.D. Roman poet Ovid described a witch in the fourth book of his work, Fasti:
He also recounted a ritual performed as an invocation to the ancient deity Carna, the goddess of flesh, to protect a infant boy from the strix:
The functionary completed the ritual by placing a white thorn branch in the window of the house. The child would then be safe.
From the strix developed the concept of the strega, a witch, usually a woman, who was believed to have the power to change her form and fly around at night in the form of a bird. She also sucked human blood and possessed a poisonous breath. Petronius in his Satyricon left one story of an encounter with the stregas. The host of a dinner party told his guests that while he was at the home of a friend, comforting her on the loss of her son, several witches gathered outside the house and created a disturbance. In the home at the time was a muscular young man who volunteered to quiet the witches. He went outside, sword in hand. A few moments later the man returned and fell on the bed. He was black and blue all over and the witches had disappeared.
The rest of the group returned to their task of consoling the mother. However, when she went in to view her son, all she found was a clump of straw. The witches had carried off the boy, and the young man who battled them never recovered. The strega continued as part of the popular culture and spread through the old Roman Empire. As late as the ninth century, Charlemagne, who established the new Holy Roman Empire, decreed capital punishment for anyone who believed that another person was a strix, and because of that belief attacked, burned, and/or cannibalized that person. It appears that such was the manner of disposing of people believed to be witches.
By the end of the fifteenth century, the witch had been demonized and turned into a Satanist by the Inquisition. People believed to be stregas were arrested, tried, and executed in Italy during the centuries of the witch-hunts. In the interrogations of the suspected witches, the inquisitors had them confess to practices commonly associated with the stregas, including the vampirizing of babies. Between 1460 and 1525 some 10 books were published on witchcraft by Italians. Among these was a brief volume, Strix, written by Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and published in Bologna in 1523. The book grew out of concern over recent accusations of witchcraft that had occurred at Brecia in 1518 and at Sondrio in 1523, though the picture of the stregas presented by Mirandola was more complete (he was drawing on common beliefs about witches) than any of the confessions at the recent trials. The accused at Brecia and Sondrio, for example, did not confess to incidents of attacking babies and sucking their blood, though Mirandola was concerned with stregas committing such crimes .
The beliefs articulated by Mirandola were common in the Renaissance and would remain a dominant opinion of the religious and intellectual leaders for the next several centuries. By the eighteenth century, Italians had joined the rest of Europe in doubting the existence of such supernatural evil as was supposedly perpetrated by witches and vampires. Remnants of the belief in strega seem to have continued to the present day. Surviving fragments of belief and practice reportedly were rediscovered by C. G. Leland in the nineteenth-century and through him have passed into the modern Wiccan revival.
Note: On the modern literary and cinematic vampire, see the entry on Vampires, in Italy .
Burke, Peter. "Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and his Strix." In Sydney Anglo, ed. The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977, pp. 32-52.
Burriss, Eli Edward. Taboo, Magic, Spirits: A Study of Primitive Elements in Roman Religion. New York: Macmillan Company, 1931. 250 pp.
Summers, Montague. The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., 1928. 356 pp. Reprint. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1960. 356 pp.
---. The Vampire in Europe. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., 1929. 329 pp. Reprint. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1961. 329 pp.
Wikipedia:
Rome |
For the civilization of classical antiquity, see Ancient Rome.
For other uses, see Rome (disambiguation).
| Rome Roma |
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|---|---|---|---|
| — Comune — | |||
| Comune di Roma | |||
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  Rome
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| Coordinates: 41°54′N 12°30′E / 41.9°N 12.5°ECoordinates: 41°54′N 12°30′E / 41.9°N 12.5°E | |||
| Country | Italy | ||
| Region | Lazio | ||
| Province | Rome (RM) | ||
| Government | |||
| - Mayor | Gianni Alemanno (PdL) | ||
| Area | |||
| - Total | 1,285.31 km2 (496.3 sq mi) | ||
| Elevation | 20 m (66 ft) | ||
| Population (June 2009)[1] | |||
| - Total | 2,730,125 | ||
| - Density | 2,124.1/km2 (5,501.4/sq mi) | ||
| - Demonym | Romani | ||
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | ||
| - Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | ||
| Postal code | 00121 to 00199 | ||
| Dialing code | 06 | ||
| Patron saint | Saint Peter and Saint Paul | ||
| Saint day | 29 June | ||
| Website | Official website | ||
Rome (English pronunciation: /roʊm/; Italian: Roma 
listen (help·info), pronounced [ˈroːma]; Latin: Rōma) is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality (central area), with over 2.7 million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi), while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million.[2] The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million.[3] It is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber river within the Lazio region of Italy. The city has been one of history's most powerful and important centres, being the home of the emperor during the Roman Empire and the Italian government. The city also has a significant place in Christianity and is the present day home of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope, and the site of the Vatican City, an independent city-state run by the Catholic Church.[4] Due to this, the city has often been nicknamed "Caput Mundi" (Latin for "Capital of the World")[5] and "The Eternal City". Also, Rome is widely regarded as one of the world's most beautiful ancient cities.[6]
Rome's history as a city spans over two and a half thousand years, as one of the founding and most powerful cities of Western Civilisation. It was the centre of the Roman Empire, which dominated Europe, North Africa and the Middle East for over four hundred years from the 1st Century BC until the 4th Century AD, and during the Ancient Roman era, the city was the most powerful in Europe.[7] During the Middle-Ages, Rome was home to some of the most powerful popes, such as Alexander VI and Leo X, who transformed the city into a modern centre of the arts and one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, along with Florence.[8] The current-day version of St Peter's Basilica was built and the Sistine Chapel's ceiling was painted by artist Michelangelo. Famous artists and architects, such as Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Bernini and Raphael resided for some time in Rome, contributing to its impressive Renaissance and Baroque architecture.[9] As a modern city, it has been capital of the unified Italy since 1870, and grew mainly in two periods either side of World War II. As it is one of the few major European cities that escaped the war relatively unscathed, central Rome remains essentially Renaissance and Baroque in character. Rome has had an immense historic influence to the world and modern society over the ages, particularly during ancient times, mainly in subjects such as architecture, art, culture, politics, literature, law, philosophy and religion.[10][11][12]
Modern Rome is a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis, and is Italy's capital of politics, economy, and media. Rome is a city rich in history, art and culture, and the vastity of its priceless monuments and treasures lead it to have many UNESCO World Heritage Sites.[13][14][15] Its modern and ancient global influence in politics, literature, culture, music, religion, education, fashion, cinema and cuisine lead it to being an Alpha- world city, according to Loughborough University and GaWC in 2008,[16] and, is the only Alpha global city in Italy, except Milan. The city is home to the Cinecittà Studios,[17] which are the largest film and television production facilities in continental Europe, and famous classic films, such as "La Dolce Vita" and "Ben Hur" have been filmed in the city. Currently, and since the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the metropolis serves as one of Europe's major political centres, with worldwide organizations such as World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),[18] International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the NATO Defence College being headquartered in the city. Rome is also Italy's capital of business and finance, along with Milan. The Rome metropolitan area has a GDP of €109 billion, and according to a 2008 study, the city is the world's 35th richest city by purchasing power, with a GDP of €94.376 billion ($121.5 billion),[19] and is the world's 18th most expensive city (in 2009).[20] Italian mega-companies, such as Eni, Enel, Telecom Italia, Agip and Alitalia,[21] are headquartered in the city. Were Rome a country, it would be the world's 52nd biggest economy, and would have a GDP near the size of that of Egypt. The city, also had, in 2003, Italy's 2nd highest GDP per capita (after Milan), that of €29,622 (US 37,412), which is 134.1% of the EU GDP per capita average.[22]
The city hosted the 1960 Olympic Games, with great success,[23] and is also an official candidate for the 2020 Olympic Games.[24]
Rome is the third-most-visited tourist destination in the European Union,[25] and its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.[26] Monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are amongst the world's 50 most visited tourist destinations (the Vatican Museums receiving 4.2 million tourists and the Colosseum receiving 4 million tourists every year).[27]
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Contents
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History
Main articles: History of Rome and Timeline of Rome history
Earliest History
There is geological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from at least 14000 years, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures paleolithic and neolithic sites.[28] Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to at least 10000 years of human presence. The power of the well known tale of Rome's legendary foundation tends also to deflect attention from its actual, and much more ancient, origins.
Monarchy, Republic, Empire
Main article: Ancient Rome
Rome's early history is shrouded in legend. According to Roman tradition, the city was founded by the twins Romulus and Remus on 21 April 753 BC.[29]
The legendary origin of the city's name is the traditional founder and first ruler. It is said that Romulus and Remus decided to build a city. After an argument, Romulus killed his brother Remus. Then he named it after himself, Rome. More recently, attempts have been made to find a linguistic root for the name Rome. Possibilities include derivation from Greek language Ῥώμη meaning bravery, courage;[30] possibly the connection is with a root *rum-, "teat", with possible reference to the totem wolf that adopted and suckled the cognately named twins Romulus and Remus. Etruscan gives us the word Rumach, "from Rome", from which Ruma can be extracted. Its further etymology, as with that of most Etruscan words, remains unknown. The Basque scholar Manuel de Larramendi thought that the origin could be related to the Basque language word orma (modern Basque kirreal), "wall".
Archaeological evidence supports the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built in the area of the future Roman Forum. While some archaeologists argue that Rome was indeed founded in the middle of the 8th century BC, the date is subject to controversy.[31] The original settlement developed into the capital of the Roman Kingdom (ruled by a succession of seven kings, according to tradition), and then the Roman Republic (from 510 BC, governed by the Senate), and finally the Roman Empire (from 27 BC, ruled by an Emperor). This success depended on military conquest, commercial predominance, as well as selective assimilation of neighbouring civilisations, most notably the Etruscans and Greeks. From its foundation Rome, although losing occasional battles, had been undefeated in war until 386 BC, when it was briefly occupied by the Gauls.[32] According to the legend, the Gauls offered to deliver Rome back to its people for a thousand pounds of gold, but the Romans refused, preferring to take back their city by force of arms rather than ever admitting defeat, after which the Romans recovered the city in the same year.
The Roman Republic was wealthy, powerful and stable before it became an empire. According to tradition, Rome became a republic in 509 BC. However, it took a few centuries for Rome to become the great city of popular imagination, and it only became a great empire after the rule of Augustus (Octavian). By the 3rd century BC, Rome had become the pre-eminent city of the Italian peninsula, having conquered and defeated the Sabines, the Etruscans and most of the Greek colonies in Sicily, Campania and Southern Italy in general. During the Punic Wars between Rome and the great Mediterranean empire of Carthage, Rome's stature increased further as it became the capital of an overseas empire for the first time. Beginning in the 2nd century BC, Rome went through a significant population expansion as Italian farmers, driven from their ancestral farmlands by the advent of massive, slave-operated farms called latifundia, flocked to the city in great numbers. The victory over Carthage in the First Punic War brought the first two provinces outside the Italian peninsula, Sicily and Sardinia. Parts of Spain (Hispania) followed, and in the beginning of the 2nd century the Romans got involved in the affairs of the Greek world. By then all Hellenistic kingdoms and the Greek city-states were in decline, exhausted from endless civil wars and relying on mercenary troops. This saw the fall of Greece in 146 BC, which ended up with what is known as the Greek Dark Ages and Roman rule in Greece.[33]
The Roman Empire really began when Emperor Augustus (63 BC–AD 14; also known as Octavian) founded the principate in 27 BC,[34] which was a monarchy system which was headed by an emperor holding power for life, rather than making himself dictator like Julius Caesar had done, which had resulted in his assassination on 15 March, 44 BC.[35] At home, Emperor Augustus started off a great programme of social, political and economic reform and grand-scale reconstruction of the city of Rome. The city became dotted with impressive and magnificent new buildings, palaces, fora and basilicae. He became a great and enlightened patron of the arts, and his court was surrounded by Virgil, Horace and Propertius.[34] His rule also established the Pax Romana, a long period of relative peace which lasted approximately 200 years.[36] To follow him were emperors such as Caligula, Nero, Trajan, and Hadrian, to name a few. Roman emperor Nero was well-known for his extravagance, cruelty, tyranny, and the myth that he was the emperor who "fiddled while Rome burned" during the night of 18 to 19 July 64 AD.[37]
Roman dominance expanded over most of Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while its population surpassed one million inhabitants.[38] For almost a thousand years, Rome was the most politically important, richest, and largest city in the Western world. After the Empire started to decline and was split, it lost its capital status to Milan and then to Ravenna, and was surpassed in prestige by the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire Constantinople whose inhabitants continued to call themselves Roman until the capture of the city by the Ottomans under Sultan Mehmet II in 1453.
Fall of the (Western) Empire and Middle Ages
With the reign of Constantine I, the 'Bishop of Rome' gained political as well as religious importance, eventually becoming known as the Pope and establishing Rome as the centre of the Catholic Church. After the Sack of Rome in 410 AD by Alaric I and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, Rome alternated between Byzantine and Germanic control. Its population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation. Rome remained nominally part of the Byzantine Empire until 751 AD, when the Lombards finally abolished the Exarchate of Ravenna. In 756, Pepin the Short gave the Pope temporal jurisdiction over Rome and surrounding areas, thus creating the Papal States. In 846, Muslim Arabs invaded Rome and looted St. Peter's Basilica.[39]
Rome remained the capital of the Papal States until its annexation by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870; the city became a major pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages and the focus of struggles between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire starting with Charlemagne, who was crowned its first emperor in Rome in 800 by Pope Leo III. Apart from brief periods as an independent city during the Middle Ages, Rome kept its status as Papal capital and "holy city" for centuries, even when the Papacy briefly relocated to Avignon (1309–1377).
Renaissance
Main article: Roman Renaissance
The latter half of the 15th century saw the seat of the Italian Renaissance move to Rome from Florence. The Papacy wanted to equal and surpass the grandeur of other Italian cities and to this end created ever more extravagant churches, bridges, squares and public spaces, including a new Saint Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, Ponte Sisto (the first bridge to be built across the Tiber since antiquity), and Piazza Navona. The Popes were also patrons of the arts engaging such artists as Michelangelo, Perugino, Raphael, Ghirlandaio, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli, and Cosimo Rosselli.
The period was also infamous for papal corruption, with many Popes fathering children, and engaging in nepotism and simony. The corruption of the Popes and the extravagance of their building projects led, in part, to the Reformation and, in turn, the Counter-Reformation. Popes, such as Alexander VI, were well-known for their decadence, wild parties, extravagance and immoral lives.[40] However, under these extravagant and rich popes, Rome was transformed into a centre of art, poetry, music, literature, education and culture. Rome became able to compete with other major European cities of the time in terms of wealth, grandeur, the arts, learning and architecture.
The Italian Renaissance in Rome more or less began when the end of the French captivity came in 1377, and the return of the papacy to Rome.[41] Pope Martin V (1417–1431), planned to renew the Roman Catholic Church, and pursue new spiritual and political reforms. Martin V and his successors began to follow these new instructions, and Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) really began to plan out much of the Renaissance-style urban re-development of the city.[41]
The Renaissance period changed Rome's face dramatically, with works like the Pietà by Michelangelo and the frescoes of the Borgia Apartment, all made during Innocent's reign. Rome reached the highest point of splendour under Pope Julius II (1503–1513) and his successors Leo X and Clement VII, both members of the Medici family. In this twenty-years period Rome became one of the greatest centres of art in the world. The old St. Peter's Basilica built by Emperor Constantine the Great[42] (which by then was in a terrible state) was demolished and a new one begun. The city hosted artists like Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli and Bramante, who built the temple of San Pietro in Montorio and planned a great project to renovate the Vatican. Raphael, who in Rome became one the most famous painters of Italy creating frescos in the Cappella Niccolina, the Villa Farnesina, the Raphael's Rooms, plus many other famous paintings. Michelangelo started the decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and executed the famous statue of the Moses for the tomb of Julius. Rome lost in part its religious character, becoming increasingly a true Renaissance city, with a great number of popular feasts, horse races, parties, intrigues and licentious episodes. Its economy was rich, with the presence of several Tuscan bankers, including Agostino Chigi, who was a friend of Raphael and a patron of arts. Before his early death, Raphael also promoted for the first time the preservation of the ancient ruins.
Towards the reunification of Italy
The rule of the Popes was interrupted by the short-lived Roman Republic (1798), which was built under the influence of the French Revolution. During Napoleon's reign, Rome was annexed into his empire and was technically part of France. After the fall of Napoleon's Empire, new states were created in Italy through the Congress of Vienna of 1814. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) under Bourbon Ferdinand IV, the restored Papal States, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia under King Charles-Albert. The two regions of Venetia and Lombardy were given to the Austrians under their direct control for some time.
Another Roman Republic arose in 1849, within the framework of revolutions of 1848. Two of the most influential figures of the Italian unification, Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, fought for the short-lived republic. However, the actions of these two great men would not have resulted in unification without the sly leadership of Camille Cavour, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.
Rome became caught up in the nationalistic turmoil of the 19th century and twice gained and lost a short-lived independence. Rome became the focus of hopes of Italian reunification when the rest of Italy was reunited under the Kingdom of Italy with a temporary capital at Florence. In 1861, Rome was declared the capital of Italy even though it was still under the control of the Pope. During the 1860s, the last vestiges of the Papal States were under the French protection Napoleon III. And it was only when this was lifted in 1870, owing to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, that Italian troops were able to capture Rome through Porta Pia (see capture of Rome). Afterwords, Pope Pius IX declared himself as prisoner in the Vatican, and in 1871, the capital of Italy was moved from Florence, to Rome.[43]
20th century
Soon after World War I, Rome witnessed the rise to power of Italian Fascism guided by Benito Mussolini, who marched on the city in 1922, eventually declaring a new Empire and allying Italy with Nazi Germany. This was a period of rapid growth in population, from 212,000 people at the time of unification to more than 1,000,000, but this trend was halted by World War II, during which Rome was damaged by both Allied forces bombing and Nazi occupation. After the execution of Mussolini and the end of the war, a 1946 referendum abolished the monarchy in favour of the Italian Republic.
Rome grew momentously after the war, as one of the driving forces behind the "Italian economic miracle" of post-war reconstruction and modernization. It became a fashionable city in the 1950s and early 1960s, the years of la dolce vita ("the sweet life"), with popular classic fims such as Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday and La Dolce Vita.[44] being filmed in the city's iconic Cinecittà Studios. A new rising trend in population continued until the mid-1980s, when the commune had more than 2,800,000 residents; after that, population started to slowly decline as more residents moved to nearby suburbs.
Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics, with great success, using many ancient sites such as the Villa Borghese and the Thermae of Caracalla as venues. For the Olympic Games many new structures were created, notably the new large Olympic Stadium (which was also enlarged and renewed to host qualification and the final match of the 1990 FIFA football World Cup), the Villaggio Olimpico (Olympic Village, created to host the athletes and redeveloped after the games as a residential district), etc. Rome is also an official candidate for the 2020 Olympic Games, along with Milan, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Brisbane and Montreal.[24]
Many of the monuments of Rome were restored by the Italian state and by the Vatican for the 2000 Jubilee.
Being the capital city of Italy, Rome hosts all the principal institutions of the nation, like the Presidency of the Republic, the government (and its single Ministeri), the Parliament, the main judicial Courts, and the diplomatic representatives of all the countries for the states of Italy and the Vatican City (curiously, Rome also hosts, in the Italian part of its territory, the Embassy of Italy for the Vatican City, a unique case of an Embassy within the boundaries of its own country). Many international institutions are located in Rome, notably cultural and scientific ones - such as the American Institute, the British School, the French Academy, the Scandinavian Institutes, the German Archaeological Institute - for the honour of scholarship in the Eternal City, and humanitarian ones, such as the FAO. Rome, also hosts major international and worldwide political and cultural organizations, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Food Programme (WFT), and the NATO Defence College.
Rome is currently an alpha- world city, along with Chicago, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Athens, Zurich, Mexico City, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Vienna and Dublin, to name a few.[45] Rome was in 2008, also ranked 15th out of all the cities of the world for global importance, mainly for cultural experience.[46]
Rome today is one of the most important tourist destinations of the world, due to the incalculable immensity of its archaeological and artistic treasures, as well as for the charm of its unique traditions, the beauty of its panoramic views, and the majesty of its magnificent "villas" (parks). Among the most significant resources: plenty of museums - (Musei Capitolini, the Vatican Museums, Galleria Borghese, and a great many others) — aqueducts, fountains, churches, palaces, historical buildings, the monuments and ruins of the Roman Forum, and the Catacombs. Rome is the 3rd most visited city in the EU, after London and Paris, and receives an average of 7-10 million tourists a year, which sometimes doubles on holy years. The Colosseum (4 million tourists) and the Vatican Museums (4.2 million tourists) are the 39th and 37th (respectively) most visited places in the world, according to a recent study.[47]
Among its hundreds of churches, Rome contains the only four Major Basilicas of the Catholic Church: Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (Basilica of St. John Lateran, Rome's cathedral), Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano (St. Peter's Basilica), Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura (Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls), and Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major). Along with the minor basilica of Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura (Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls), those churches correspond to the five ancient sees of chalcedonian Christianity namely Rome, Byzantium, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem respectively. The Bishop of Rome is the Pope.
Administration
See also: List of mayors of Rome
Capital of Italy
Rome is the national capital of Italy and is the seat of the Italian Government. The official residences of the President of the Italian Republic and the Italian Prime Minister, the seats of both houses of the Italian Parliament and that of the Italian Constitutional Court are located in the historic centre. The state ministries are spread out around the city; these include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is located in Palazzo della Farnesina near the Olympic stadium.
City government
Rome constitutes one of Italy's 8,101 communes, and is the largest both in terms of land area and population. It is governed by a mayor, currently Gianni Alemanno, and a city council. The seat of the commune is in on the Capitoline Hill the historic seat of government in Rome. The local administration in Rome is commonly referred to as "Campidoglio", the name of the hill in the Roman dialect.
Administrative divisions
Main article: Administrative subdivision of Rome
Rome is divided into 19 administrative areas, called municipi or municipalities. They were created in 1972 for administrative reasons to increase decentralisation in the city.[48] Each municipality is governed by a president and a council of four members who are elected by the residents of the municipality every five years. The municipalities frequently cross the boundaries of the traditional, non-administrative divisions of the city.
Rioni of Rome
Main article: Rioni of Rome
See also: 14 regions of Augustan Rome and 14 regions of Medieval Rome
Rome is also divided into differing types of non-administrative divisions. The historic centre is divided into 22 rioni, all of which are located within the Aurelian Walls except Prati and Borgo.
The Rioni have changed in number throughout history, from ancient Rome, the medieval period,[49] to the Renaissance. They were later organized in a more precise way by Pope Benedict XIV in 1743.
Even after Napoleon I lost his power in the city, there were no sensible changes in the organization of the city, until Rome became the capital of the new born Italy. The needs of the new capital caused a great urbanization and an increase of the population, both within the Aurelian walls and outside them. In 1874 the rioni became 15 adding Esquilino, obtained taking a part from Monti. At the beginning of the 20th century some rioni started being split up and the first parts outside the Aurelian walls started being considered part of the city.
In 1921 the number of the rioni increased to 22. Prati was the last rione to be established and the only one outside the Aurelian walls.
The latest reform, which is still mostly valid, was made in 1972: Rome was divided in 20 circoscrizioni (later renamed municipi, one of which has since become an independent municipality) and all the 22 rioni (thus the historical center) were placed in the first one, Municipio I.
The complete list of the modern rioni, in order of number, is the following:
- Monti
- Trevi
- Colonna
- Campo Marzio
- Ponte
- Parione
- Regola
- Sant'Eustachio
- Pigna
- Campitelli
- Sant'Angelo
- Ripa
- Trastevere
- Borgo
- Esquilino
- Ludovisi
- Sallustiano
- Castro Pretorio
- Celio
- Testaccio
- San Saba
- Prati
Geography
Location
Rome is in the Lazio region of central Italy on the Tiber river (Italian: Tevere). The original settlement developed on hills that faced onto a ford beside the Tiber island, the only natural ford of the river. The historic centre of Rome was built on seven hills: the Aventine Hill, the Caelian Hill, the Capitoline Hill, the Esquiline Hill, the Palatine Hill, the Quirinal Hill, and the Viminal Hill. The city is also crossed by another river the Aniene which joins the Tiber north of the historic centre.
Although the city centre is about 24 km (14.9 mi) inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea, the city territory extends to the shore, where the south-western district of Ostia is located. The altitude of the central part of Rome ranges from 13 m (43 ft) above sea level (at the base of the Pantheon) to 139 m (456 ft) above sea level (the peak of Monte Mario).[51] The Commune of Rome covers an overall area of about 1,285 km2 (496 sq mi), including many green areas.
Topography
Throughout the history of Rome, the urban limits of the city were considered to be the area within the city walls. Originally, these consisted of the Servian Wall, which was built twelve years after the Gaulish sack of the city in 390 BC. This contained most of the Esquiline and Caelian hills, as well as the whole of the other five. Rome outgrew the Servian Wall, but no more walls were constructed until almost 700 years later, when, in 270 AD, Emperor Aurelian began building the Aurelian Walls. These were almost 19 km (12 mi) long, and were still the walls the troops of the Kingdom of Italy had to breach to enter the city in 1870. Modern Romans frequently consider the city's urban area to be delimited by its ring-road, the Grande Raccordo Anulare, which circles the city centre at a distance of about 10 km.
The Commune of Rome, however, covers considerably more territory and extends to the sea at Ostia, the largest town in Italy that is not a commune in its own right. The Commune covers an area roughly three times the total area within the Raccordo and is comparable in area to the entire provinces of Milan and Naples, and to an area six times the size of the territory of these cities. It also includes considerable areas of abandoned marsh land which is suitable neither for agriculture nor for urban development.
As a consequence, the density of the Commune is not that high, the communal territory being divided between highly urbanised areas and areas designated as parks, nature reserves, and for agricultural use. The Province of Rome is the largest by area in Italy. At 5,352 km², its dimensions are comparable to the region of Liguria.
Climate
Rome enjoys a typical Mediterranean climate that is characteristic of the Mediterranean coasts of Italy. It is at its most comfortable from April through June, and from mid-September to October; in particular, the Roman ottobrate (which can be roughly translated as the "beautiful October days") are famously known as sunny and warm days. By August, the temperature during the heat of the day often exceeds 32 °C (90 °F). Traditionally, many businesses closed during August, and Romans abandoned the city for holiday resorts. In more recent years, however, in response to growing tourism and changing work habits, the city is increasingly staying open for the whole summer. The average high temperature in December is about 13 °C (55 °F), but can reach in hot periods higher temperatures, while subzero lows are not uncommon. Snowfalls are rare in Rome and can occour in December, January and February. In the last decades anyway Rome registered poor cases of snow: the last precipitation with accumulated snow on the ground has been in 1986 (in some periferical areas in 1991), being the next snowfalls, occurred only four times, without significant traces on the ground. The last snowfall in Rome has been registered in 2005.[52]
| Weather data for Rome | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °C (°F) | 12.9 (55) |
13.7 (57) |
15.3 (60) |
18.0 (64) |
22.0 (72) |
25.6 (78) |
28.6 (83) |
28.7 (84) |
26.0 (79) |
22.0 (72) |
17.2 (63) |
13.9 (57) |
20.3 (69) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 3.7 (39) |
4.4 (40) |
5.8 (42) |
8.3 (47) |
11.9 (53) |
15.6 (60) |
18.2 (65) |
18.4 (65) |
15.8 (60) |
12.0 (54) |
8.1 (47) |
5.1 (41) |
10.6 (51) |
| Precipitation cm (inches) | 8.00 (3.1) |
7.49 (2.9) |
6.50 (2.6) |
5.47 (2.2) |
3.18 (1.3) |
1.63 (0.6) |
1.47 (0.6) |
3.33 (1.3) |
6.82 (2.7) |
9.34 (3.7) |
11.05 (4.4) |
8.96 (3.5) |
73.31 (28.9) |
| Avg. precipitation days | 9.1 | 8.3 | 7.9 | 7.0 | 4.4 | 2.4 | 1.6 | 2.8 | 4.5 | 7.0 | 9.9 | 9.0 | 73.9 |
| Source: World Meteorological Organization (UN)[53] | |||||||||||||
Demographics
At the time of the Emperor Augustus, Rome was the largest city in the world, and probably the largest built until the 19th century, which may have inspired John Heywood's famous epigram, "Rome wasn't built in a day." Estimates of its peak population range from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people, with 1 to 2 million being most popular with historians. Estimates have been made using the weight and consumption of imported grain and the free dole to 20% of the population. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, this suggests an 800,000 - 1.2 million inhabitants based on various per capita consumption figures. The figure 25.5 million modii of grain (400 million pounds) in storage in the time of emperor Septimius Severus is taken from the late 4th century Historia Augusta. The city population may have been as high as 600,000 until the loss of the richest North African Provinces in the 430s, 440s, and 450s. Thereafter, the population fell rapidly without grain imports (except for some from Sicily and Sardinia) and the unwillingness of the upper classes to support the continued cost to them after the loss of many of their own estates outside Italy. Moreover, it was not worth the effort to maintain an artificially large population. However, every effort was made to keep the area of the Palatine and Forum intact as well as the largest Baths and some other amenities for a smaller population of 90-150,000. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city's population fell dramatically to less than 50,000 people, and continued to either stagnate or shrink until the Renaissance.[citation needed] When the Kingdom of Italy annexed Rome in 1870, the city had a population of about 200,000, which rapidly increased to 600,000 by the eve of World War I. The Fascist regime of Mussolini tried to block an excessive demographic rise of the city, but failed to prevent it from reaching one million people by 1931. After the Second World War, growth continued, helped by a post-war economic boom. A construction boom also created a large number of suburbs during the 1950s and 1960s.
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|
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In 2007, there were 2,718,768 people resident in Rome (some 4 million live in the greater Rome area), located in the province of Rome, Lazio, of whom 47.2% were male and 52.8% were female. Minors (children ages 18 and younger) totalled 17.00 percent of the population compared to pensioners who number 20.76 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of a Roman resident is 43 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Rome grew by 6.54 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent.[54] The current birth rate of Rome is 9.10 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.
Ethnic groups
As of 2006, 92.63% of the population was Italian, either born in Rome or coming from other cities in the country. The largest ethnic minority groups came from other European countries (mostly from Romania and Poland): 3.14%, East Asia (mostly Filipino): 1.28%, and the Americas (mostly from Argentina): 1.09%.
Religion
Main article: Religion in Rome
See also: Churches of Rome
Much like the rest of Italy, Rome is predominantly Roman Catholic. Although Rome is home to the Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica, Rome's cathedral is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, located to the south-east of the city-centre. There are around 900 churches in Rome in total, aside from the cathedral itself, some others of note include: the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, the Basilica di San Clemente, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and the Church of the Gesu. There are also the ancient Catacombs of Rome underneath the city. Numerous highly important religious educational institutions are also in Rome, such as the Pontifical Lateran University, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Pontifical Gregorian University, and Pontifical Oriental Institute.
The territory of Vatican City is part of the Mons Vaticanus, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields, where St. Peter's Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, and museums were built, along with various other buildings. The area was part of the Roman rione of Borgo until 1929. Being separated from the city, on the west bank of the Tiber river, the area was an outcrop of the city that was protected by being included within the walls of Leo IV, and later expanded by the current fortification walls of Paul III/Pius IV/Urban VIII. When the Lateran Treaty of 1929 that gave the state its present form was being prepared, the boundaries of the proposed territory was influenced by the fact that much of it was all but enclosed by this loop. For some tracts of the frontier, there was no wall, but the line of certain buildings supplied part of the boundary, and for a small part of the frontier a modern wall was constructed.
The territory includes Saint Peter's Square, distinguished from the territory of Italy only by a white line along the limit of the square, where it touches Piazza Pio XII. St. Peter's Square is reached through the Via della Conciliazione, which runs from the Tiber River to St. Peter's. This grand approach was constructed by Benito Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty. According to the Lateran Treaty, certain properties of the Holy See that are located in Italian territory, most notably Castel Gandolfo and the major basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial status similar to that of foreign embassies.
Cityscape
See also: List of tourist attractions in Rome and List of streets in Rome
Architecture
Main article: Architecture of Rome
Ancient Rome
Main articles: List of ancient monuments in Rome and Ancient Roman architecture
One of the symbols of Rome is the Colosseum (70–80 AD), the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire. Originally capable of seating 60,000 spectators, it was used for gladiatorial combat. A list of important monuments of ancient Rome includes the Roman Forum, the Domus Aurea, the Pantheon, Trajan's Column, Trajan's Market, the Catacombs, the Circus Maximus, the Baths of Caracalla, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis, the Arch of Constantine, the Pyramid of Cestius, and the Bocca della Verità.
Medieval
Often overlooked, Rome's medieval heritage is one of the largest in Italian cities. Basilicas dating from the Paleochristian age include Santa Maria Maggiore and San Paolo Fuori le Mura (the latter largely rebuilt in the 19th century), both housing precious 4th century AD mosaics. Later notable medieval mosaic and fresco art can be also found in the churches of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santi Quattro Coronati, and Santa Prassede. Lay buildings include a number of towers, the largest being the Torre delle Milizie and the Torre dei Conti, both next the Roman Forum, and the huge staircase leading to the basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.
Renaissance and Baroque
Rome was a major world centre of the Renaissance, second only to Florence, and was profoundly affected by the movement. The most impressive masterpiece of Renaissance architecture in Rome is the Piazza del Campidoglio by Michelangelo, along with the Palazzo Senatorio, seat of the city government. During this period, the great aristocratic families of Rome used to build opulent dwellings as the Palazzo del Quirinale (now seat of the President of the Italian Republic), the Palazzo Venezia, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo Barberini, the Palazzo Chigi (now seat of the Italian Prime Minister), the Palazzo Spada, the Palazzo della Cancelleria, and the Villa Farnesina.
Rome is also famous for her huge and majestic squares (often adorned with obelisks), many of which were built in the 17th century. The principal squares are Piazza Navona, Piazza di Spagna, Campo de' Fiori, Piazza Venezia, Piazza Farnese and Piazza della Minerva. One of the most emblematic examples of Baroque art is the Fontana di Trevi by Nicola Salvi. Other notable 17th-century baroque palaces are the Palazzo Madama, now the seat of the Italian Senate and the Palazzo Montecitorio, now the seat of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy.
Neoclassicism
In 1870, Rome became the capital city of the new Kingdom of Italy. During this time, neoclassicism, a building style influenced by the architecture of antiquity, became a predominant influence in Roman architecture. During this period, many great palaces in neoclassical styles were built to host ministries, embassies, and other governing agencies. One of the best-known symbols of Roman neoclassicism is the Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II or "Altar of the Fatherland", where the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, that represents the 650,000 Italians that fell in World War I, is located.
Fascist architecture
See also: Fascist architecture
The Fascist regime that ruled in Italy between 1922 and 1943 developed an architectural style that was characterised by its links with ancient Roman architecture. The most important Fascist site in Rome is the E.U.R district, designed in 1938 by Marcello Piacentini. It was originally conceived for the 1942 world exhibition, and was called "E.42" ("Esposizione 42"). The world exhibition, however, never took place because Italy entered the Second World War in 1940. The most representative building of the Fascist style at E.U.R. is the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (1938–1943), the iconic design of which has been labelled the cubic or Square Colosseum. After World War II, the Roman authorities found that they already had the seed of an off-centre business district of the type that other capitals were still planning (London Docklands and La Défense in Paris). Also the Palazzo della Farnesina, the current seat of Italian Foreign Ministry, was designed in 1935 in Fascist style.
Parks and gardens
Main article: List of parks and gardens in Rome
Public parks and nature reserves cover a large area in Rome, and the city has one of the largest areas of green space amongst European capitals.[55] The most notable part of this green space is represented by the large number of villas and landscaped gardens created by the Italian aristocracy. While many villas were destroyed during the building boom of the late 19th century, a great many remain. The most notable of these are Villa Borghese, Villa Ada, and Villa Doria Pamphili. Villa Doria Pamphili is high on the Gianicolo hill comprising some 1.8 km. Also on the Gianicolo hill there is Villa Sciarra, with playgrounds for children and shaded walking areas. In the nearby area of Trastevere the Orto Botanico (Botanical Garden) is a cool and shady green space. The old Roman hippodrome (Circus Maximus) is another large green space but the main attraction is the ancient site of the chariot racing and it has few trees. Nearby is the lush Villa Celimontana, close to the gardens surrounding the Baths of Caracalla and Rose Garden (‘roseto comunale’). The Villa Borghese garden is the best known large green space in Rome, with famous art galleries among its shaded walks. It is close to the Spanish Steps and Piazza del Popolo. Rome also has a number of regional parks of much more recent origin including the Pineto Regional Park and the Appian Way Regional Park. There are also nature reserves at Marcigliana and at Tenuta di Castelporziano.
Fountains and aqueducts
Main articles: List of fountains in Rome and List of aqueducts in the city of Rome
Rome is a city famous for its numerous fountains, built in all different styles, from Classical and Medieval, to Baroque and Neoclassical. The city has had fountains for more than two thousand years, and they have provided drinking water and decorated the piazzas of Rome. During the Roman Empire, in 98 A.D., according to Sextus Julius Frontinus, the Roman consul who was named curator aquarum or guardian of the water of the city, Rome had nine aqueducts which fed 39 monumental fountains and 591 public basins, not counting the water supplied to the Imperial household, baths and owners of private villas. Each of the major fountains was connected to two different aqueducts, in case one was shut down for service.[56] During the 17th and 18th century the Roman popes reconstructed other ruined Roman acqueducts and built new display fountains to mark their termini, launching the golden age of the Roman fountain. The fountains of Rome, like the paintings of Rubens, were expressions of the new style of Baroque art. They were crowded with allegorical figures, and filled with emotion and movement. In these fountains, sculpture became the principal element, and the water was used simply to animate and decorate the sculptures. They, like baroque gardens, were "a visual representation of confidence and power." [57]
Obelisks
Main article: List of obelisks in Rome
The city contains eight ancient Egyptian and five ancient Roman obelisks, together with a number of more modern obelisks; there was also formerly (until 2005) an ancient Ethiopian obelisk in Rome.[58] The city contains some of obelisks in piazzas, such as in Piazza Navona, St Peter's Square, Piazza Montecitorio, and Piazza del Popolo, and others in villas, thermae parks and gardens, such as in Villa Celimontana, the Baths of Diocletian, and the Pincian Hill.
Bridges
Main article: List of bridges in Rome
The city of Rome contains numerous famous bridges which cross the Tiber. Famous ones include the Ponte Cestio, the Ponte Milvio, the Ponte Nomentano, the Ponte Sant'Angelo, the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte dei Quattro Capi. Currently there are five ancient Roman bridges still remaining in the city.[59] Most of the city's public bridges were built in Classical or Renaissance style, but also in Baroque, Neoclassical and Modern styles. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the finest ancient bridge remaining in Rome is the Ponte Sant'Angelo, which was completed in 135AD, and was decorated with 10 statues of the angels, designed by Bernini in 1688.[60]
Economy
Main article: Economy of Rome
With a 2005 GDP of €94.376 billion (US$121.5 billion),[61] the city produces 6.7% of the national GDP (more than any other single city in Italy), and its unemployment rate, lowered from 11.1% to 6.5% between 2001 and 2005, is now one of the lowest rates of all the European Union capital cities.[61] Rome grows +4.4% annually and continues to grow at a higher rate in comparison to any other city in the rest of the country.[61] This means that were Rome a country, it would be the world's 52nd richest country by GDP, near to the size to that of Egypt. Rome also had a 2003 GDP per capita of €29,153 (US$ 37,412), which was second in Italy, (after Milan), and is more than 134.1% of the EU average GDP per capita.[22]
Although the economy of Rome is characterized by the absence of heavy industry and it is largely dominated by services, high-technology companies (IT, aerospace, defense, telecommunications), research, construction and commercial activities (especially banking), and the huge development of tourism are very dynamic and extremely important to its economy. Rome's international airport, Fiumicino, is the largest in Italy, and the city hosts the head offices of the vast majority of the major Italian companies, as well as the headquarters of three of the world's 100 largest companies: Enel, Eni, and Telecom Italia.[62]
Universities, national radio and television and the movie industry in Rome are also important parts of the economy: Rome is also the hub of the Italian film industry, thanks to the Cinecittà studios, working since the 1930s. The city is also a centre for banking and insurance as well as electronics, energy, transport, and aerospace industries. Numerous international companies and agencies headquarters, government ministries, conference centres, sports venues, and museums are located in Rome's principal business districts: the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR); the Torrino (further south from the EUR); the Magliana; the Parco de' Medici-Laurentina and the so-called Tiburtina-valley along the ancient Via Tiburtina.
Tourism in Rome
Main article: Tourism in Rome
Tourism is one of Rome's chief industries, with numerous notable museums including the Vatican Museum, the Borghese Gallery, and the Musei Capitolini: in 2005 the city registered 19.5 million of global visitors, up of 22.1% from 2001.[61] In 2006 Rome has been visited by 6.03 million of international tourists, reaching the 8th place in the ranking of the world's 150 most visited cities.[63] Rome is also the 3rd most city in the EU,[25] and its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.[26] Public monuments and buildings, such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are amongst the world's 50 most visited tourist destinations (the Vatican Museums receiving 4.2 million tourists and the Colosseum receiving 4 million tourists every year).[27]
Education
Rome is a nation-wide and major international centre for higher education, containing numerous academies, colleges and universities. According to the City Brands Index, Rome is considered the world's second most historically, educationally and culturally interesting and beautiful city.[64] It boasts a large variety of academies and colleges, and has always been a major worldwide intellectual and educational centre, especially during Ancient Rome and the Renaissance, along with Florence.[65]
Libraries
Rome's major libraries include: the Biblioteca Angelica, opened in 1604, making it Italy's first public library; the Biblioteca Casanatense, opened in 1701; the Biblioteca Vallicelliana; Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute of Art History, a German library located in Rome, often noted for excellence in the arts and sciences;[66] the National Central Library, one of the two national libraries in Italy, which contains 4,126,002 volumes; The Biblioteca del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, specialized in diplomacy, foreign affairs and modern history; the Biblioteca dell'Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana; the Biblioteca Don Bosco, one of the largest and most modern of all Salesian libraries; the Biblioteca e Museo teatrale del Burcardo, a museum-library specialized in history of drama and theatre; the Biblioteca della Società Geografica Italiana, which is based in the Villa Celimontana and is the most important geographical library in Italy, and one of Europe's most important;[67] and the Vatican Library, one of the oldest and most important libraries in the world, which was formally established in 1475, though in fact much older and has 75,000 codices from throughout history.[68]
Universities
See also: Roman academies
Rome has numerous universities and colleges. Its first university, La Sapienza (founded in 1303), is the largest in Europe and the second-largest in the world, with more than 150,000 students attending.[citation needed] La Sapienza in 2005 was Europe's 33rd best university,[69] and currently ranks amongst Europe's 50 and the world's 150 best colleges.[70] Two new public universities were founded: Tor Vergata in 1982, and Roma Tre in 1992.
|
Others include:
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Other Institutions and Foreign Schools
Rome contains a large number of pontifical universities and other institutes, including the British School at Rome, the French School in Rome, the Pontifical Gregorian University (The oldest Jesuit university in the world, founded in 1551), Istituto Europeo di Design, the St. John's University, the American University of Rome, the Scuola Lorenzo de' Medici, the Link Campus of Malta, and the Università Campus Bio-Medico. Rome is also the location of the John Felice Rome Center, a campus of Loyola University Chicago.
Museums
Main article: List of museums in Rome
Rome contains huge vastities of culture, treasures, art and sculpture, stored in some of Rome's numerous museums. The Vatican Museums are amongst the most famous and important in the world, with over 4.2 million visitors a year, making them the world's 37th most visited tourist destination.[47] Other major museums in Rome include the Accademia di San Luca, Capitoline Museums, Lateran Museum, Galleria Borghese, Galleria Colonna, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Museum of Rome and Palazzo Altemps, to name a few.[72]
Culture
Main article: Culture in Rome
See also: Events in Rome and List of people from Rome
| Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura* | |
|---|---|
| UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
 |
|
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | i, ii, iii, iv, vi |
| Reference | 91 |
| Region** | Europe and North America |
| Inscription history | |
| Inscription | 1980 (4th Session) |
| Extensions | 1990 |
| * Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO. |
|
Archaeology
See also: Roman archaeology
Rome is a major archaeological hub, and one of the world's main centres of archaeological research. There are numerous cultural and research institutes located in the city, such as the American Academy in Rome,[73] and The Swedish Institute at Rome,[74] to name a few. Rome contains numerous ancient sites, including the Forum Romanum, Trajan's Market, Trajan's Forum,[75] the Colosseum, and the Pantheon, to name but a few. The Colosseum, arguably one of Rome's most iconic archaeological sites, is regarded as a wonder of the world.[76][77]
Art
See also: Arts in Rome and Roman art
Rome contains a vast and impressive collection of art, sculpture, fountains, mosaics, frescos, and paintings, from all different periods. Rome first became a major artisic centre during ancient Rome, with forms of important Roman art such as architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Metal-work, coin-die and gem engraving, ivory carvings, figurine glass, pottery, and book illustrations are considered to be 'minor' forms of Roman artwork.[78] Rome later became a major centre of Renaissance art, since the popes spent vast sums of money for the constructions of grandiose basilicas, palaces, piazzas and public buildings in general. Rome became one of Europe's major centres of Renaissance artwork, second only to Florence, and able to compare to other major cities and cultural centres, such as Paris and Venice. The city was affected greatly by the baroque, and Rome became the home of numerous artists and architects, such as Bernini, Caravaggio, Carracci, Borromini and Cortona, to name a few.[79] In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the city was one of the centres of the Grand Tour,[80] when wealthy, young English and other European aristocrats visited the city to learn about ancient Roman culture, art, philosophy and architecture. Rome hosted a great number of neoclassical and rococo artists, such as Pannini and Bernardo Bellotto. Today, the city is a major artistic centre, with numerous art institutes[81] and museums.
Music
Main article: Music of Rome
Rome is an important centre for music, and it has an intense musical scene, including several prestigious music conservatories and theatres. It hosts the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (founded in 1585), for which new concert halls have been built in the new Parco della Musica, one of the largest musical venues in the world. Rome also has an opera house, the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, as well as several minor musical institutions. The city also played host to the Eurovision Song Contest in 1991 and the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2004.
Rome has also had a major impact in music history. The Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, which were active in the city during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically they are often contrasted with the
Cuisine and Gastronomy
Main articles: Food in Rome and Drink in Rome
See also: Roman cuisine
Rome's cuisine has evolved through centuries and periods of social, cultural, and political changes. Rome became a major gastronomical centre during Ancient Rome. Ancient Roman cuisine was highly influenced by Ancient Greek culture, and after, the empire's enormous expansion exposed Romans to many new, provincial culinary habits and cooking techniques. In the beginning, the differences between social classes were not very great, but disparities developed with the empire's growth. Later, during the Renaissance, Rome became well-known as a centre of high-cuisine, since some of the best chefs of the time, worked for the popes. An example of this could be Bartolomeo Scappi, who was a chef, working for Pius IV in the Vatican kitchen, and he acquired fame in 1570 when his cookbook Opera dell'arte del cucinare was published. In the book he lists approximately 1000 recipes of the Renaissance cuisine and describes cooking techniques and tools, giving the first known picture of a fork.[82] Today, the city is home to numerous formidable and traditional Italian dishes A Jewish influence can be seen, as Jews have lived in Rome since the 1st century BCE. Vegetables, especially globe artichokes, are common.[83] Examples of these include "Saltimbocca alla Romana" - a veal cutlet, Roman-style; topped with raw ham and sage and simmered with white wine and butter; "Carciofi alla giudia" - artichokes fried in olive oil, typical of Roman Jewish cooking; Carciofi alla romana - artichokes Roman-style; outer leaves removed, stuffed with mint, garlic, breadcrumbs and braised; "Spaghetti alla carbonara" - spaghetti with bacon, eggs and pecorino, and "Gnocchi di semolino alla romana" - semolina dumpling, Roman-style, to name but a few.
Cinema
Main articles: List of films set in Rome and List of films set in ancient Rome
Rome hosts the Cinecittà Studios,[17] the largest film and television production facility in continental Europe and the centre of the Italian cinema, where a large number of today's biggest box office hits are filmed. The 99-acre (40-ha) studio complex is 5.6 miles (9 km) from the centre of Rome and is part of one of the biggest production communities in the world, second only to Hollywood, with well over 5,000 professionals — from period costume makers to visual effects specialists. More than 3,000 productions have been made on its lot, from recent features like The Passion of the Christ, Gangs of New York, HBO's Rome, The Life Aquatic and Dino De Laurentiis’ Decameron, to such cinema classics as Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, and the films of Federico Fellini.
Founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini, the studios were bombed by the Western Allies during the Second World War. In the 1950s, Cinecittà was the filming location for several large American film productions, and subsequently became the studio most closely associated with Federico Fellini. Today Cinecittà is the only studio in the world with pre-production, production, and full post-production facilities on one lot, allowing directors and producers to walk in with their script and "walk out" with a completed film.
Language
Main articles: Roman dialect and Latin
The original language of Rome was Latin, which evolved during the Middle Ages into Italian. The latter emerged as the confluence of various regional dialects, among which the Tuscan dialect predominated, but the population of Rome also developed its own dialect, the Romanesco. The ancient romanesco, used during the Middle Ages, was a southern Italian dialect, very close to the Neapolitan. The influence of the Florentine culture during the renaissance, and, above all, the immigration to Rome of many Florentines, amongst them the two Medici Popes (Leo X and Clement VII) and their suite, caused a major shift in the dialect, which began to resemble more the Tuscan varieties (the immigration of Florentines was mainly due to the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the subsequent demographic decrease). This remained largely confined to Rome until the 19th century, but then expanded to other zones of Lazio (Civitavecchia, Latina), from the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to the rising population of Rome and to better transportation systems. As a consequence, Romanesco abandoned its traditional forms to mutate into the dialect spoken within the city, which is more like standard Italian, although it remains distinct from the other Romanesco-influenced local dialects of Lazio. Dialectal literature in the traditional form Romanesco includes the works of such authors as Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, Trilussa, and Cesare Pascarella. Contemporary Romanesco is mainly represented by popular actors such as Aldo Fabrizi, Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Anna Magnani, Gigi Proietti, Enrico Montesano, and Carlo Verdone.
Rome's historic contribution to language in a worldwide sense is much more extensive however. Latin became perhaps the most powerful language in history before today's English, and has bequeathed a great deal of the technical and scientific vocabulary of many languages, along with Greek. The Roman or Latin alphabet is the most widely used writing system in the world used by the greatest number of languages.[84]
Media
See also List of radio stations in Rome.
A list of newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television channels based in Rome:
| Newspapers | Magazines | Television | Radio |
|---|---|---|---|
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Fashion
See also: Shopping areas and markets in Rome
Rome is widely recognized as a world fashion capital. Although not as important as Milan, Rome is the world's 4th most important center for fashion in the world, according to the 2009 Global Language Monitor after Milan, New York and Paris, and beating London.[85] Major luxury fashion houses and jewelry chains, such as Bulgari, Fendi,[86] Laura Biagiotti and Brioni (fashion), just to name a few, are headquartered or were founded in the city. Also, other major labels, such as Chanel, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani and Versace have luxury boutiques in Rome, primarily along its prestigious and upscale Via dei Condotti.
Seven hills
Main article: Seven hills of Rome
The city is famous for its seven hills, east of the river Tiber: Aventine Hill (Aventinus), Caelian Hill (Caelius), Capitoline Hill (Capitolinus), Esquiline Hill (Esquilinus), Palatine Hill (Palatinus), Quirinal Hill (Quirinalis), Viminal Hill (Viminalis).[87] Of the seven hills of current Rome, five (Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Quirinal and Viminal hills) are populated with monuments, buildings, and parks. The Capitoline now hosts the Municipality of Rome, and the Palatine Hill is an archaeological area. All these hills have strong cultural legacies and have unique histories. There are also other hills in Rome, such as the Janiculum Hill, the Pincian Hill and the Vatican Hill, to name a few, but these do not count as part of the seven hills of the city.
Sports
Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is an official candidate to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Football is the most popular sport in Rome, as in the rest of the country. The Olympic Stadium hosted the final game of the 1990 FIFA World Cup; it is also the home stadium for local Serie A clubs A.S. Roma and S.S. Lazio, whose rivalry has become a staple of Roman sports culture. Footballers who play for these teams and are also born in the city tend to become especially popular, as has been the case with players such as Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi (both for A.S. Roma).
Rugby union is gaining wider acceptance. The Stadio Flaminio is the home stadium for the Italy national rugby union team, which has been playing in the Six Nations Championship since 2000, albeit with less than satisfactory performances, as they have never won the championship. Rome is home to local rugby teams, such as Unione Rugby Capitolina, Rugby Roma, and S.S. Lazio.
Every May, Rome hosts the ATP Masters Series tennis tournament on the clay courts of the Foro Italico. Cycling was popular in the post-WWII period, although its popularity has faded. Rome has hosted the final portion of the Giro d'Italia twice, in 1989 and 2000. Rome is also home to other sports teams, including basketball (Virtus Roma), volleyball (M. Roma Volley), handball or waterpolo.
Transportation
Main article: Transport in Rome
Rome is at the centre of the radial network of roads that roughly follow the lines of the ancient Roman roads that began at the Capitoline Hill and connected Rome with its empire. Today Rome is circled, at a distance of about 10 km (6 mi), by the ring-road (the Grande Raccordo Anulare).
Due to its location in the centre of the Italian peninsula, Rome is a principal railway node for central Italy. Rome's main train station, Termini, is one of the biggest train stations in Europe and the most heavily used in Italy, with around 400 thousand travellers passing through every day. The second-largest station in the city, Roma Tiburtina, is currently being redeveloped as a high-speed rail terminus.[88]
Rome is served by three airports. The intercontinental Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport is Italy's chief airport and is commonly known as "Fiumicino Airport", as it is located within the nearby Comune of Fiumicino, south-west of Rome. The older Rome Ciampino Airport is a joint civilian and military airport. It is commonly referred to as "Ciampino Airport", as it is located beside Ciampino, south-east of Rome. A third airport, the Roma-Urbe Airport, is a small, low-traffic airport located about 6 km north of the city centre, which handles most helicopter and private flights.
The city suffers from traffic problems largely due to this radial street pattern, making it difficult for Romans to move easily from the vicinity of one of the radial roads to another without going into the historic centre or using the ring-road. These problems are not helped by the limited size of Rome's metro system when compared to other cities of similar size. In addition, Rome has only 21 taxis for every 10,000 inhabitants, far below other major European cities.[89] Chronic congestion caused by cars during the 1970s and 1980s led to restrictions being placed on vehicle access to the inner city-centre during the hours of daylight. Areas where these restriction apply are known as Limited Traffic Zones (Zona a Traffico Limitato (ZTL) in Italian). More recently, heavy night-time traffic in Trastevere and San Lorenzo has led to the creation of night-time ZTLs in those districts, and there are also plans to create another night-time ZTL in Testaccio.
A 2-line metro system called the Metropolitana operates in Rome. Construction on the first branch started in the 1930s. The line had been planned to quickly connect the main train station with the newly planned E42 area in the southern suburbs, where the 1942 World Fair was supposed to be held. The event never took place because of war. The area was later partly redesigned and renamed EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma: Rome Universal Exhibition) in the 1950s to serve as a modern business district. The line was finally opened in 1955, and it is now part of the B Line.
The A line opened in 1980 from Ottaviano to Anagnina stations, later extended in stages (1999 – 2000) to Battistini. In the 1990s, an extension of the B line was opened from Termini to Rebibbia. This underground network is generally reliable (although it may become very congested at peak times and during events, especially the A line) as it is relatively short. As of 2005, its total length is 38 km (24 mi).
The two existing lines, A and B, intersect at Roma Termini station. A new branch of the B line (B1) is under construction with an estimated cost of €500 million. It is scheduled to open in 2012. B1 will connect to line B at Piazza Bologna and will have four stations over a distance of 3.9 km (2 mi). A third line, line C, is under construction with an estimated cost of €3 billion and will have 30 stations over a distance of 25.5 km (16 mi). It will partly replace the existing Rail Road line, Termini-Pantano. It will feature full automated, driverless trains.[90] The first section is due to open in 2011 and the final sections in 2015, but archaeological findings often delay underground construction work.
A fourth line, line, is also planned. It will have 22 stations over a distance of 20 km (12 mi). The first section is projected to open in 2015 and the final sections before 2035.
Above-ground public transport in Rome is made up of a bus and tram network. This network is run by Trambus S.p.A. under the auspices of ATAC S.p.A. (which originally stood for the Bus and Tram Agency of the Commune, Azienda Tranvie ed Autobus del Comune in Italian). The bus network has in excess of 350 bus lines and over 8 thousand bus stops, whereas the more-limited tram system has 39 km of track and 192 stops.[91] There is also one trolleybus line, opened in 2005, and additional trolleybus lines are planned.[92]
International entities, organisations and involvement
Rome is unique in having a sovereign state located entirely within its city limits, the Vatican City. The Vatican is a enclave of Rome and a sovereign possession of the Holy See, the supreme government of the Roman Catholic Church. Rome hosts foreign embassies to both Italy and the Holy See, although frequently the same ambassador is accredited to both.
Another body, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), took refuge in Rome in 1834 after having lost Malta to Napoleon. It is sometimes classified as having sovereignty but does not claim any territory in Rome or anywhere else, hence leading to dispute over its actual sovereign status.
Rome is also the seat of international agencies of the United Nations, such as the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Rome has traditionally been involved in the process of European political integration. In 1957, the city hosted the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (predecessor to the European Union), and also played host to the official signing of the proposed European Constitution in July 2004.
Rome is the seat of the NATO Defence College and is the place where the Statute of the International Criminal Court was formulated.
International relations
Twin towns, Sister cities & Partner cities
Rome is since 1956 exclusively and reciprocally twinned only with:
- *(French: Seule Paris est digne de Rome; seule Rome est digne de Paris; Italian: Solo Parigi è degna di Roma; solo Roma è degna di Parigi; English: Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris)
Rome's sister and partner cities are:
See also
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Notes
- Lucentini, Mario (2002) (in Italian). La Grande Guida di Roma. Rome: Newton & Compton Editori. ISBN 88-8289-053-8.
- Spoto, Salvatore (1999) (in Italian). Roma Esoterica. Rome: Newton & Compton Editori. ISBN 88-8289-265-4.
- Richard Brilliant (2006). Roman Art. An American's View. Rome: Di Renzo Editore. ISBN 88-8323-085-X.
Documentaries
- The Holy Cities: Rome produced by Danae Film Production, distributed by HDH Communications; 2006.
External links
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Mentioned in
- balnearium
- culina
- Olympas
- Persis
- Phlegon
- Caelian (geographical area, Italy)
- Palatine (hill, Rome)
- Felicity of Rome
- rome penny
- Andronicus (in the New Testament)
