Rome (Italy)

 

 

Modern Rome has become a city of diversified industries and its suburbs have mushroomed with colourful blocks of flats. But the tourist trade overshadows all other economic activity, as visitors lend continued support to the old saying that "All roads lead to Rome".

 

 

Ancient Rome was built on the east bank of the Tiber on seven hills rising from the marshy lowland of the Campagna. The seven hills are the Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline and Caelian. The traditional story tells of the founding of Rome by Romulus (who, with his brother Remus, had been suckled by a she-wolf) in 753 B.C. - the date from which Roman historians reckoned the city's history. It was probably the Etruscans who civilised Rome and established its control over the surrounding region, called Latium. About 500 B.C., the Romans overthrew their foreign rulers and established the Roman republic, to last four centuries.

 

 

Under the rule of the Senate, Rome began her march to world supremacy. In the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., the city came into full contact with Greek civilisation, which brought about many changes in Roman life. In the course of its conquest, Rome defeated Carthage, her chief rival, in the Punic Wars. Greece and Egypt came under Roman control in the 2nd century B.C., Julius Caesar, a popular democratic leader, became master of Rome in 70 B.C., brought the Near Eastern shores of the Mediterranean under Roman dominion, and achieved great personal fame during the Gallic Wars, in the territory that is now France. Ceasar's assassination in 44 B.C., resulted in anarchy, out of which emerged the Roman Empire under Augustus Caesar. Augustus brought a long period of peace to the city, extended the Empire to the North Sea and into eastern Europe as far as the Danube delta, and built the great system of Roman roads, many of which are still in use.

 

 

Throughout the Roman Empire the Chistians expanded steadily, despite persecutions. In the face of constant danger, they worshipped in the open, even in Rome, where the catacombs housed not only graves but also churches. In the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D., the Empire was gradually divided, through internal dissension, into a Western and an Eastern part — the latter with its capital at Byzantium, since renamed Constantinople, and now called Istanbul. In the 5th century, the weakened Empire was attacked by Germanic tribes, and the last Emperors moved their capital away from 'The Eternal City'. In this general disintegration the Popes, originally the Bishops of Rome, greatly increased their power, and thus restored to the city some of the importance it was losing as a political centre. The end of the Roman Empire came in A.D. 476, when the last Emperor was deposed by the invading barbarians.

 

 

Although the fall of Rome came about gradually, the Italian peninsula did not recover from the event until the middle of the 19th century. Its history throughout the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern period is bewildering in its detail, as a result of the country's fragmentation into numerous self-governing units. Beginning in the 15th century, the Popes strengthened their rule over the city and over the Papal States. Italy was proclaimed an independent kingdom in 1862, but Rome did not become its capital until 1871, when the Pope was forced to surrender his temporal powers. The subsequent conflict between the Pope and the King was not solved until the signing in 1929 of the Lateran Treaty, which gave the Pope sovereignty over Vatican City. The Fascist march on Rome (1922) brought Mussolini to power. Since World War II, Italy's President and republican government rule the country from Rome in place of the former kings.

 

 

Among the city's most famous sites, apart from the Vatican City, are: the Colosseum; the ruins of the ancient Forum Romanum and the Emperors' Fora; the Arch of Constantine and the Baths of Caracalla; the beautiful Renaissance buildings designed by Michelangelo on the Capitoline Hill; the impressive but ornate monument to King Victor Emmanuel II; and the Palazzo Venezia, a Renaissance palace from the balcony of which Mussolini used to address the Roman crowds.

 

 

Among the countless churches of Rome, there are five patriarchal basilicas — St Peter's (the world's largest), St John Lateran, St Mary Major, St Lawrence's Outside the Walls, and St Paul's Outside the Walls. Most of the city's churches occupy the sites of martyrs' tombs.