Rome PDF
Rome PDF
Rome PDF
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BRITANNICA QUIZ
Lithuania
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disrepair. Physically mutilated, economically paralyzed, politically
senile, and militarily impotent by the late Middle Ages, Rome
nevertheless remained a world power—as an idea. The force of Rome
the lawgiver, teacher, and builder continued to radiate throughout
Europe. Although the situation of the popes from the 6th to the 15th
century was often precarious, Rome knew glory as the fountainhead
of Christianity and eventually won back its power and wealth and
reestablished itself as a place of beauty, a source of learning, and a
capital of the arts.
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Rome: ColosseumColosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre), Rome, c. AD 70–82.©
Goodshoot/Jupiterimages
Since Mussolini’s fall and the traumas of World War II, when the city
was occupied by Germans, politics have continued to dominate
Rome’s agenda—although regionalism began, in the 1980s, to devolve
some political power away from the capital. Lagging
behind Milan and Turin economically, Rome has maintained
a peripheral place within the Italian and European economies. It also
has been plagued with perennial housing shortages and traffic
congestion. However, the late 20th and early 21st centuries brought
increased efforts to resolve Rome’s infrastructural problems and to
foster a Roman cultural revival.
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Mussolini, BenitoBenito Mussolini.Photos.com/Thinkstock
Landscape
City site
The Roman countryside, the Campagna, was one of the last areas of
central Italy to be settled in antiquity. Rome was built on a defensible
hill that dominated the last downstream, high-banked river crossing
where traverse of the Tiber was facilitated by a midstream island. This
hill, Palatine Hill, was one of a group of hills, traditionally counted as
seven, around which the ancient city grew. The other hills are the
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Capitoline, the Quirinal, the Viminal, the Esquiline, the Caelian, and
the Aventine.
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RomeThis map of Rome appeared in the 10th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, published in 1902–
03.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Rome; Vatican CitySt. Peter's Basilica and the Tiber River, Rome.© vvoe/Fotolia
Climate
Rome’s hot, dry summer days, with high temperatures often above 75
°F (24 °C), are frequently cooled in the afternoons by the ponentino, a
west wind that rises from the Tyrrhenian Sea. The city receives
roughly 30 inches (750 mm) of precipitation annually; spring and
autumn are the rainiest seasons. Frosts and occasional light snowfalls
punctuate the otherwise mild winters, when high temperatures
average just above 50 °F (10 °C). The tramontana, a cold, dry wind
from the north, frequents the city in the winter.
City layout
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Travel along ancient Rome's lava-paved Appian Way stretching across southeastern
ItalyParts of the Appian Way, the first great Roman road, can still be seen
today.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.See all videos for this article
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Rome: tunnels and underground chambersLearn about Rome's numerous tunnels
and underground chambers, which undermine the city and imperil its
buildings.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this article
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RomeCity centre and metropolitan area of Rome, Italy.Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc.
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Roman Empire: masonryLearn about the infrastructure of imperial Rome,
particularly Roman masonry.© Open University (A Britannica Publishing
Partner)See all videos for this article
Indeed, ancient city walls still enclose much of the city centre, which is
the area of Rome to which tourists flock. The so-called Servian Wall,
named for the 6th-century-BCE Roman king Servius Tullius but built
almost certainly 12 years after the Gauls’ destruction of Rome in
390 BCE, enclosed most of the Esquiline and Caelian hills and all of the
other five. It was built into ramparts that dated at least from the
early Roman Republic. Although Rome grew beyond the Servian
defenses, no new wall was constructed until the
emperor Aurelian began building in brick-faced concrete in 270 CE.
Approximately 12.5 miles (20 km) long and girdling about 4 square
miles (10 square km), the Aurelian Wall is still largely intact. Small as
it is, the old city contains hundreds of hotels, more than
200 palazzi (palaces), several of the city’s major parks, the residence
of the Italian president, the houses of parliament, offices of local and
national government, and the great historical monuments, in addition
to thousands of offices, restaurants, and bars.
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Many of the treasures of Rome no longer can be seen where they were
placed originally, many can be seen only in other cities of the world,
and many others still in Rome represent the spoils of conquest
brought to the city from around the ancient world or the cannibalizing
of one age or of one faith upon the creations of an earlier one. Rome
was sacked first by the Gauls (see Celts) in 390 BCE and subsequently
by the Visigoths in 410 CE, the Vandals in 455, the Normans in 1084,
and troops of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V in 1527. Muslims
laid it under siege in 846. The Great Fire of Rome—Nero’s fire—
occurred in 64 CE, and fires and earthquakes ravaged individual
buildings or whole areas fairly often over the millennia. But, of all
these scourges, it was the stripping of the structures of antiquity for
building materials, especially from the 9th century through the 16th,
that destroyed more of Classical Rome than any other force. The
heritage of the past that survives in Rome is nevertheless unsurpassed
in any city of the West.
The main street in central Rome is the Via del Corso, an important
thoroughfare since Classical times, when it was the Via Flaminia, the
road to the Adriatic. Its present name comes from the horse races
(corse) that were part of the Roman carnival celebrations. From the
foot of the Capitoline Hill, the Corso runs to the Piazza del Popolo and
through a gate in the city wall, the Porta del Popolo, there to resume
its ancient name.
Vittoriano
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“typewriter.” Useful as well as ornamental, it contains a museum of
the 19th-century cultural revival. The Vittoriano was bombed by
neofascist terrorists in December 1969 and was immediately closed to
the public; it reopened in 2001.
Among the smart shops along the Corso are churches, palaces, and the
column of Marcus Aurelius. San Marco was the first of Rome’s parish
churches to be built (c. 336 CE) on the plan of a Classical basilica (a
public hall in pre-Christian Rome). The present church, third on the
site, dates from the 9th century and was restored in the 15th by the
Venetian pope Paul II, who also built a new papal residence,
the Palazzo Venezia (“Venetian Palace”), near the church. Thereafter,
the basilica’s priest was always a Venetian cardinal, sharing
the palace with the Venetian embassy. Mussolini had his headquarters
in the Palazzo Venezia and harangued the crowds from the balcony
from which Paul II had cheered the carnival races and given his
papal benediction. The palace is now an art museum and contains the
Biblioteca dell’Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte
(Library of the National Institute of Archaeology and Art History).
The column of Marcus Aurelius, with reliefs showing his victory over
Danubian tribes, was preserved from the assorted Christian looters of
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Rome because it was the property of a religious order. In the square
around the column, the Piazza Colonna, are the Palazzo Chigi (1562),
for many years the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and now the official
residence of the prime minister, and the Palazzo Wedekind. Although
built in the 19th century, the Wedekind is not without its plundered
antique columns.
The Corso emerges onto the splendid oval Piazza del Popolo (“People’s
Square”), which is monumental without being intimidating. Over a
period of 300 years, it was constructed as the ceremonial entryway to
Rome, and, although its elements are diverse in style and in age (13th
century BCE–19th century CE), a remarkable harmony prevails. In 1561
the Porta del Popolo, the medieval gate in the city wall, was rebuilt.
Ninety-four years later its inner face was redone by Bernini for the
grand entrance of Queen Christina, who had abandoned the Protestant
throne of Sweden for the hospitality of Catholic Rome. In 1589
Pope Sixtus V punctuated the piazza’s centre with an obelisk (13th
century BCE) brought by the
emperor Augustus from Heliopolis in Egypt to the Circus Maximus.
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The church next to the gate, Santa Maria del Popolo, which stood for
centuries before the piazza existed and gives its name to the area, was
founded in 1227 to replace a 1099 chapel built over what was
presumed to be the emperor Nero’s tomb. It was replaced in 1472–77
by the present-day church, further disguised on the piazza frontage by
a Neoclassical facade. The interior is fraught with the works of
great Renaissance and Baroque artists. The main chapel has tombs
by Andrea Sansovino and frescoes by Pinturicchio. In the Cerasi
Chapel are Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St. Paul and The
Crucifixion of St. Peter. The Chigi Chapel, unique for the early 16th
century in being a miniature church, was designed
by Raphael. Bernini sculpted two of the four prophets in the corners.
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Caravaggio: The Conversion of St. Paul (second version)The Conversion of
St. Paul (second version), oil on canvas by Caravaggio, 1601; in Santa Maria
del Popolo, Rome.SCALA/Art Resource, New York
At the opposite end of the piazza stand “twin” churches (1662) framing
the entrance to three streets. The streets were there first, so the
churches were ingeniously squeezed into awkward, different-sized
plots between them. Santa Maria in Montesanto, on the east, has an
oval plan and dome, while Santa Maria dei Miracoli, on the narrower
plot toward the Tiber on the west, has a round dome. Carlo Rainaldi,
the architect, turned both facades slightly inward to frame the
welcoming parades that would proceed up the Corso between the two
churches. One of the streets, the Via del Babuino, was one of many
built by Sixtus V.
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Piazza di Spagna
Running roughly southeast from the Piazza del Popolo, the Via del
Babuino leads to the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Square). An obelisk
there was erected in 1857 to commemorate the 1854 promulgation of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The fountain there, the
Barcaccia (“Scow”), is fed by the Acqua Vergine, an aqueduct of 19 BCE,
which escaped Gothic destruction because it was mainly underground
and which was repaired in 1447. When the fountain was planned in
the early 1600s by Bernini (believed to be Pietro, though some have
attributed the work to his son, Gian Lorenzo), there was insufficient
water pressure for spouting jets, so the shape of the Barcaccia was
conceived: an ancient marble boat foundering endearingly in its
marble bath.
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Rome: BarcacciaBarcaccia (“Scow”) fountain, usually attributed to Pietro
Bernini, 1627–29, Piazza di Spagna, Rome.© Jeffrey S. Campbell
Spanish StepsScalinata della Trinità dei Monti, known as the Spanish Steps
(or Stairs), 18th century, Rome.© stocker1970/Shutterstock.com
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The English novelist Charles Dickens described the steps as thronged
with unengaged “artist’s models” in regional costume; they are still
crowded with loiterers in distinctive dress from all over the world.
Indeed, since the end of the 16th century the Piazza di Spagna has
been a stopping place for tourists as well as a destination for artists
and writers. Young lords on the Grand Tour of Europe left their heavy
touring coaches for refitting in a side street still called Via delle
Carozze (“Carriage Street”). The English poet John Keats died in a
house on the piazza that is now a museum. A number of artists—those
who have not been shouldered out by galleries and ultra-modish
shops—still retain studios among the walled gardens of the nearby Via
Margutta.
Spanish StepsScalinata della Trinità dei Monti, known as the Spanish Steps
(or Stairs), 18th century, Rome.© Jeffrey S. Campbell
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Via Vittorio Veneto
The Palatine
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Rome: Romulus and RemusOverview of the founding of Rome, including a
discussion of Romulus and Remus.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee
all videos for this article
The origins of Rome, as of all ancient cities, are wrapped in fable. The
Roman fable is of Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, abandoned
on the flooding Tiber and deposited by the receding waters at the foot
of the Palatine. Suckled by a she-wolf, they were reared by a shepherd
and grew up to found Rome. (The bronze statue of the maternally
ferocious wolf, now in the city’s Capitoline Museums, is one of the
best-known works among the thousands of masterpieces in Rome.)
The Lupercal, the supposed cave of the she-wolf, was maintained as a
shrine at least until the fall of the empire. On the same side of the
Palatine, “Romulus’s House,” a timber-framed circular hut covered in
clay-plastered wickerwork, also was kept in constant repair in ancient
times. Modern excavations have revealed the emplacement of just
such Iron Age huts from the period (8th–7th century BCE) given in the
fable for the founding of Rome. In addition, in 2007 a vaulted
sanctuary thought to be the long-lost Lupercal was discovered 52 feet
(16 metres) below the surface of the Palatine.
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Romulus and RemusLegendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus,
with their wolf foster mother, bronze sculpture; in the Capitoline Museums,
Rome. The wolf traditionally has been identified as Etruscan, c. 500–480 BC,
though some early 21st-century research suggests medieval origins. The
twins date from the 16th century.© irisphoto1/Fotolia
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Rome was in practice part of Carolingian Italy, but the popes had a great deal of
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Circus MaximusSite of the Circus Maximus, Rome, with the ruins of the
imperial palace on Palatine Hill in the background.Tom Corser
By the 3rd century BCE the Palatine was a superior residential district.
Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, was born there in 63 BCE and
continued to live there after he became emperor. His private dwelling,
built about 50 BCE and never seriously modified, still stands. It is
known as the House of Livia, for his widow, and has small, graceful
rooms decorated with paintings. Other private houses, now excavated
and visible, were incorporated into the foundations of the spreading
imperial structures, which eventually projected down into
the Forum on one side and onto the Circus Maximus on the other. The
emperor Tiberius built a palace to
which Nero, Caligula, Trajan, Hadrian, and Septimius Severus made
additions. The biggest and richest structure of all was created
for Domitian (reigned 81–96 CE), whose architect achieved feats of
construction engineering not seen before in Rome. Parts of the lavish
structure—the richly marbled, centrally heated dining hall of which is
among the chambers visible today—were occupied by popes after there
were no more emperors, and then the hill was abandoned.
Frescoed wall of fruit trees, palms, and oleanders from the garden room,
Villa of Livia, Rome, c. 50 BC. In the Museo Nazionale Romano,
Rome.SCALA/Art Resource, New York
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After some six centuries the great Roman families returned to the
Palatine, planting 16th-century pleasure gardens and pavilions over
past glories. A whole set of rooms from the private wing of Domitian’s
palace was preserved by incorporation into the Villa Mattei. Atop
Tiberius’s palace the Farnese family built two aviaries and a garden
house and laid out one of Europe’s first botanical gardens—some parts
of which have escaped archaeological excavation.
The Capitoline
The Capitoline Hill (Italian: Campidoglio) was the fortress and asylum
of Romulus’s Rome. The northern peak was the site of the Temple
of Juno Moneta (the word money derives from the temple’s function
as the early mint) and the citadel emplacements now occupied by the
Vittoriano monument and the church of Santa Maria d’Aracoeli. The
southern crest, sacred to Jupiter, became in 509 BCE the site of
the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the largest temple in
central Italy. The tufa platform on which it was built, now exposed
behind and beneath the Palazzo dei Conservatori, measured 203 by
174 feet (62 by 53 metres), probably with three rows of six columns
across each facade and six columns and a pilaster on either flank. The
first temple, of stuccoed volcanic stone quarried at the foot of the hill,
had a timber roof faced with brightly painted terra-cottas. Three times
it burned and was rebuilt, always of richer materials. The temple that
Domitian built was marble with gilded roof tiles and gold-plated
doors. It was filled with loot by victorious generals who came robed in
purple to lay their laurel crowns before Jupiter after riding in triumph
through the Forum. The antique pavings of the Clivus Capitolinus, the
road leading up the hill from the Forum, survive today. In this centre
of divine guidance, the Roman Senate held its first meeting every year.
Centuries later, in 1341, the Italian poet Petrarch was crowned with
laurel among the ruins of this capitol.
The church of Santa Maria d’Aracoeli, built before the 6th century and
remade in its present form in the 13th, is lined with columns rifled
from Classical buildings. It is the home of “Il Bambino,” a wooden
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statue (originally a 15th-century statue; now a copy) of the Christ
Child, who is called upon to save desperately ill children.
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Rome: Palazzo SenatorioPalazzo Senatorio (background right) facing the ruins of the Roman Forum, Rome.© Ron
Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Rome: Palazzo SenatorioRuins of the Roman Forum with the Palazzo Senatorio in the background, Rome.© Ron
Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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as well as a host of portrait busts that can, in imagination, repeople the
Forum just below.
The Aventine
The Caelian
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Rotondo (460–483) may have been modeled on the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The ruins of the Baths of Caracalla (c. 206–216), the public baths of
the emperor Caracalla, are found on the river flats behind the Caelian
Hill. Among the towering remains set in a large park,
the caldarium (steam room) is now used for summer opera
performances. Much of the famed Farnese family collection of marbles
was stripped from these baths.
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Caracalla, Baths ofThe Baths of Caracalla, Rome.David Edgar
The Esquiline
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cryptoporticusThe cryptoporticus built by Nero to connect his Golden House
with other imperial palaces on Palatine Hill, Rome.Marina/MM
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deeply coffered tunnel-vaulted bays on either side. It was probably
ruined by the earthquake of 847 and was also mined for its materials.
One of the great Corinthian columns stands obelisk-like before the
Santa Maria Maggiore church on the Esquiline. The head of a colossal
statue of Constantine that once stood in the basilica now reposes in
the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori.
Like much of the Esquiline, the adjacent Viminal and Quirinal hills lie
in the heart of modern Rome. Heavily built upon and sclerotic with
traffic, the former seems almost flattened under the Ministry of the
Interior. The ancient Baths of Diocletian (c. 298–306) are northeast of
the Viminal. Some idea of their size (130,000 square yards [110,000
square metres] for the main bath block) can be gained from the fact
that the church of San Bernardo was built into one of the chambers
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some 500 feet (150 metres) west of the central hall of
the frigidarium (cold room), into which Michelangelo built the
cloister church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in 1561. A portion of
the Museo Nazionale Romano (National Museum of Rome) is housed
in the baths complex. This matchless collection of antiquities includes
wall paintings from villas, mosaics, sarcophagi, and sculptures.
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Pollux. Closed on three sides by palaces, the piazza opens on the
fourth to a splendid view over the Tiber.
Carlo Maderno, who put the facade on St. Peter’s Basilica, made the
plans for the Palazzo Barberini, which were carried out after his death
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by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, assisted by Francesco Borromini. Each of
these two rivals has a church just around the corner. After 20 years of
apprenticeship, Borromini was given his first chance to do his own
building. It was a church at an impossibly tiny site at the crossroads of
Quattro Fontane (“Four Fountains,” one of which is built into
a niche in the church wall), but his creation, San Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane, was a triumph. To his revolutionary solutions for site
problems, for which he employed a brilliant variation on the oval,
Borromini added a facade in 1667, the year he died, which responded
to the waves of motion generated by the spatially complex interior. His
work created a sensation, and his ideas were seized upon by Baroque
artists, especially from other countries. Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al
Quirinale is also small, but it took 12 years to build (1658–70), late in
his career. An oval building with the naves sculpted into the outer wall,
it enlarges on concepts advanced by Michelangelo. Bernini’s use of
coloured marbles and shrewd lighting effects gives the small structure
extra dimension. Nearby is the Teatro dell’Opera (Opera House), built
in 1880 by Achille Sfondrini. It was acquired by the state in 1926 and
is Rome’s most important lyric theatre.
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San Carlo alle Quattro FontaneSan Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome.Jean-
Christophe BENOIST
Other hills
Behind the Piazza del Popolo is the Pincio (Pincian Hill). During the
Roman Empire the Pincio was covered with villas and gardens, but it
was made into a public park only in the 19th century. Toward sunset
many Romans arrive to stroll along the Pincio promenade.
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and Antonio Canova’s Neoclassical nude statue of Pauline Bonaparte,
for a time a Borghese princess, as Venus Victrix.
The 1544 Villa Medici was bought by Napoleon in 1801 to house the
Accademia di Francia (French Academy), which is still in occupation.
This academy, founded in 1666, is the oldest of many national
academies established from the 17th to the 19th century to give
architects, artists, writers, and musicians the opportunity to study the
vast textbook that is the city itself and to use its museums and
libraries. The Villa Giulia was a typical mid-16th-century Roman
suburban villa, conceived not as a dwelling but as a place for repose
and entertainment during the afternoon and early evening. It houses
the Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia (Villa Giulia National Museum),
which has a collection of Etruscan art and artifacts of singular beauty
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and historical value. Other attractions of the Borghese grounds include
the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (National Gallery of Modern
Art), founded in 1883, with an important collection of 19th- and 20th-
century Italian art, and the Bioparco–Giardino Zoologico (Biopark–
Zoological Garden), established in 1911.
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The Forum
The Forum was the religious, civic, and commercial centre of ancient
Rome. After the time of Julius Caesar, though it became more
imposing, it was only one (albeit the most distinguished) of several
complexes serving the same functions. Essentially, it was a small
closed valley ringed by the Seven Hills. There were two meeting places,
formal open spaces, in the northwest corner—the political Comitium
and the social Forum (the name later applied to the entire valley)—
with shops down both sides. At the other end of the valley was the
precinct of the high priest of Roman religion and that of the Vestals,
the keepers of the sacred flame. Between these two were the temples of
the gods. Various emperors opened up the ends of the valley, and
there was more building, but the poles of activity did not alter.
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Roman ForumThe Column of Phocas (left foreground) and the Temple of
Antoninus and Faustina (left background) among the ruins of the Roman
Forum, Rome.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Janus and Saturn, both of whom have temples in the Forum valley,
were among the gods of early Rome, and the Temple of Vesta, even in
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its last marble version (191 CE), retained the circular shape of a
primitive clay-and-wattle hut. The forge of Vulcan, the Volcanal, had
very early beginnings. The Regia, traditionally described as the
residence of Numa Pompilius, the priest-king, became the
administrative building for the pontifex maximus, who took on the
ancient monarchy’s priestly duties. The Temple of Castor and Pollux
(the Dioscuri) was built at the establishment of the republic.
The oldest formally consecrated monument was the open space of the
social Forum. A roughly trapezoidal stretch of ground, it was bare save
for three plants essential to Mediterranean agriculture: the grape, the
fig, and the olive. Centuries later, when the basilicas were built behind
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the bordering shops, they served as a protective palisade for the
Forum and a covered extension of its open space. At the wide end of
the Forum and to one side was the Comitium, in which the popular
assembly met. Nearby lay the orators’ platform, the Rostra, decorated
in 338 BCE with the iron rams (rostra) taken as trophies from the
warships of Antium (now Anzio, Italy).
Caesar also carried his building program onto the flat ground just
north of the valley between the Quirinal and Esquiline hills, making
his own forum of shops and temple, alongside
which Augustus, Trajan, Nerva, and Vespasian later constructed their
forums. Pompey’s theatre in the bed of the Tiber (55 BCE) was followed
by the Theatre of Marcellus (13 BCE). The great baths, Agrippa’s grand
concourse in the Campus Martius, the circuses, and the Colosseum all
drew the populace away to other centres of activity. The political
attraction of the Forum, already vitiated in Caesar’s day, continued to
decline.
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Trajan's ForumTrajan's Forum, Rome; designed by Apollodorus of
Damascus.Markus Bernet
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Roman ForumThe Temple of Saturn (foreground) and the Arch of Septimius
Severus in the Forum of Rome.© spooh/iStock.com
Today the Forum is a confusing boneyard of history. Although later
buildings perpetuated the name and roughly the position of the first
halls and temples, their ruins do not necessarily stand where earlier
buildings stood, and many details of the earlier Forum are still the
subject of scholarly speculation. Of the thousands of remaining
columns, not many more than 50 stand erect, and amid the ruins are
Christian churches, thickets of trees and bushes, and hundreds upon
hundreds of free-living cats.
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The ruins of the Roman Forum, Rome.Photos.com/Thinkstock
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The Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine
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ColosseumStudying the effects of local construction on the Colosseum,
Rome.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this article
Between the Caelian and the Esquiline, the end of the Forum valley is
filled by the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, with the Palatine
edging down from the north. The Colosseum (c. 70–82 CE) that
replaced Nero’s ornamental lake is more correctly called the Flavian
Amphitheatre, after the Flavian dynasty of emperors. It was begun
by Vespasian and inaugurated by Titus in 80 CE. The oval stadium
measures about one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometre) around,
with external dimensions of 620 by 513 feet (190 by 155 metres). The
approximately 160-foot (48-metre) facade has three superimposed
series of 80 arches and an attic story. The attached columns follow the
order applied on the Theatre of Marcellus (13 BCE): sturdy,
unadorned Doric on the ground floor, more elegant Ionic next, and
luxuriant Corinthian on top. The attic story bore corbels supporting
masts from which royal sailors manipulated awnings to protect the
50,000 seats from the sun during the gladiatorial contests, combats
with wild animals, sham battles, and, when the arena was flooded,
naval displays. The main structural framework and facade
are travertine, the secondary walls of volcanic tufa, the inner bowl and
the arcade vaults of concrete. Until Pius VIII (reigned 1829–30) began
conserving what was left, it had been a convenient quarry for 1,000
years.
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Constantine, Arch ofThe Arch of Constantine, Rome.© Jeff
Banke/Shutterstock.com
Along a 1.5-mile (2.5-km) stretch of the Tiber, around a big bend in its
course, lie all the historic quarters of the river plain. On the right
(west) bank are the Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice; built 1889–
1910), the Castel Sant’Angelo (Hadrian’s Tomb), the entrance
to Vatican City, and the Trastevere district. On the left (east) bank are
the Forum Boarium, Forum Holitorium, Circus Flaminius,
and Campus Martius.
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Castel Sant'AngeloCastel Sant'Angelo, Rome.Dallas and John Heaton from
Stone—CLICK/Chicago
At the bottom of the bend is Tiber Island. The island, 1,100 feet (335
metres) long and less than 330 feet (100 metres) wide at its widest,
has been a place of healing since the Temple of Asclepius was erected
after the plague of 291 BCE; the largest building there is the
Fatebenefratelli Hospital (also called the Hospital of San Giovanni di
Dio). Facing the hospital is another of Rome’s
towered medieval family fortresses, this one built by the Pierleoni.
Several of the bridges along this part of the Tiber are of special
interest. The Ponte Sant’Angelo is in the main the ancient Pons Aelius,
built about the same time as Hadrian’s Tomb, which stands at one end
of the bridge. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was asked to add angels to the
Ponte Sant’Angelo in the 17th century. The Ponte Cestio, often rebuilt
since the 1st century BCE, leads from Tiber Island to Trastevere, on the
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west bank, while the Ponte Fabricio (62 BCE), the oldest in Rome, links
the island to the shore below the Capitoline, on the east bank. Just
downstream from the island are the remains of the Ponte Rotto
(“Broken Bridge”) of the 2nd century BCE and two bridges farther
along. One of these, the modern Ponte Sublicio, is named for the
wooden bridge defended on this part of the river by the legendary
Roman hero Horatius and his comrades.
Tiber River, RomeSant'Angelo Bridge over the Tiber River, Rome.© Shawn
McCullars
Castel Sant’Angelo
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the Aurelian Wall and became a key fortress in the defense of Rome.
In the 6th century St. Gregory I, leading a procession to pray for the
end to a plague, allegedly had a vision of the archangel Michael atop
the tomb. The epidemic ceased, and the tomb-citadel became known
as the Castel Sant’Angelo (Castle of the Holy Angel). In time it became
a papal castle, with richly furnished and frescoed rooms, loggias for
the view, a siege store of 5,800 gallons (22,000 litres) of oil and
770,000 pounds (350,000 kg) of grain, a centrally heated bathroom, a
prison that incarcerated the artist Benvenuto Cellini, among others,
and a still-intact fortified passage from the Vatican to carry the pope to
refuge there. It is now a state museum with an arboured terrace.
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Trastevere
The Trastevere (“Across the Tiber”) district, long the home of powerful
Roman families, features palaces built during the Renaissance (e.g.,
the Villa Farnesina) and later (e.g., the 18th-century Palazzo Corsini).
Most of the streets are still narrow and without sidewalks. Every 100
paces or so the haphazard cobbled lanes open upon some surprising
small piazza with a palace, a church, a cloister, or a group of cafés. In
the later 20th century, Trastevere took on the characteristics of a rich
bohemian neighbourhood with a high percentage of foreign residents.
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Some authorities claim Santa Maria in Trastevere as the oldest church
in Rome. It is said that Severus Alexander (reigned 222–235)
permitted Christians to gather at this site under the leadership of the
pope St. Calixtus I, and it is recorded that the pope St. Julius I either
raised or rebuilt a church there in 341–352. Today’s church is largely
12th-century Romanesque, with a beguiling mosaic facade.
On the shore by the Ponte Rotto is the site of the earliest cattle market
(Forum Boarium) and vegetable market (Forum Holitorium), girded
with temples, of which two remain: an elegant circular marble
structure of the 1st century BCE and a nicely proportioned
rectangular Ionic building, perhaps a few decades older. Their
dedications are disputed—save that they are not, as they are popularly
called, temples of Vesta and of Fortuna Virilis. In the 6th century the
church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin was built into the antique grain-
commission offices. Some of the Forum Boarium columns can still be
seen on the interior of the church, and one of its drain lids, fixed to the
outer wall, was carved to represent a face with a gaping mouth. This
Classical manhole cover became the dreaded Bocca della Verità
(“Mouth of Truth”), which allegedly would crunch down upon the
hand of anyone telling a lie.
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Marcellus, Theatre ofThe Theatre of Marcellus, Rome.© Danilo
Ascione/Shutterstock.com
From there northward and inland as far as the Via Flaminia (the
modern Corso), the river plain was a vast plantation of temples, baths,
and sports grounds until the Middle Ages, when the remaining
Romans took up residence there. The portion closest to Tiber Island
was once a major republican racing and sports ground, the Circus
Flaminius (220 BCE), which in the 16th century became the Jewish
ghetto. For many years the neighbourhood retained a Jewish flavour,
but eventually it became ripe for conversion to luxurious flats. Nearby,
the Largo Argentina, excavated 1926–29, contains four small temples
of the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE.
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sculpture unearthed nearby in 1550 and deposited in the Palazzo
Spada was erroneously believed to be the Pompey statue. A part of the
theatre was fortified by the Orsini family in the 12th century and later
converted into the Palazzo Righetti, or Pio.
Campus Martius
The rest of the river bend northward was known as the Campus
Martius (Field of Mars). Marshy in places, with a few temples and
public buildings, it was made into one of the grandeurs of Rome
by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in the 1st century BCE. The swamp
became a lake, the Stagnum Agrippae, amid a landscape of lawns,
baths, temples, and parks. Today, interspersed among roughly 40
palaces and 100 churches are remnants of what the emperors later
built there. The shape and some of the remains of Domitian’s stadium
(81–89 CE), which remained intact until at least 1450, are retained in
the Piazza Navona. Even more spectacular are the reconstructed Ara
Pacis Augustae (“Altar of Augustan Peace”) and the Pantheon.
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As almost nothing from Agrippa’s time remained after the fire of
80 CE, the emperor Hadrian undertook to restore some of it. Among
his works was the new Pantheon, one of the West’s great buildings,
extraordinary as architecture and remarkable as a feat of engineering.
This “Temple of All the Gods,” imperial property, survived because it
became a church, the gift of the Byzantine emperor Phocas to
Pope Boniface IV in 608. This protected the building from everyone
but the popes: the bronze roof beams of the grandiose pedimental
porch of 18 columns of Egyptian granite were stripped by Urban VIII,
a 17th-century pope of the Barberini family, who took them as raw
material for the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica—provoking the
celebrated anonymous comment, “Quod non fecerunt barberi,
fecerunt Barberini” (“What was not done by the barbarians was done
by the Barberini”).
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PantheonExterior of the Pantheon, begun 27 BC, rebuilt c. AD 118–128,
Rome.© Jeffrey S. Campbell
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The shattered drum of Augustus’s tomb marks the spot where he was
buried in 14 CE. The mausoleum became a 12th-century fortress of
the Colonna family, a 16th-century garden, a ring for Spanish
bullfights in the 17th century, and then a concert hall until 1936, when
it was scraped down to its impressive but mournful foundations by
Mussolini, who may have planned to be buried there himself. Next to
the tomb is the delicately beautiful white marble Ara Pacis (dedicated
9 BCE). The altar, raised on steps, is enclosed in a sculptured screen.
Bits of the friezes were discovered off the Corso in the 15th century,
and the altar itself was dug up there in 1938 after 35 years of labour.
The pieces unearthed earlier were bought back from museums, and
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the whole was reassembled to stand four streets away from its original
location.
Renaissance palaces
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Three architecturally celebrated buildings in the palace-studded river
region are the Cancelleria, the Farnese, and the Massimo alle
Colonne palaces. Because all the pertinent documents were destroyed
in the sack of Rome in 1527, the architect of the Palazzo della
Cancelleria remains unknown. Dated 1486–98, it was built by
Cardinal Raffaelo Riario out of a night’s winnings at the gaming table.
Seized by Pope Leo X (reigned 1513–21), it has housed some portion of
the Vatican chancellery ever since, except during Napoleonic and
revolutionary interruptions. A square building with a rusticated
ground floor, its upper stories are plain and rhythmically pilastered,
while the columned inner court is noble and deeply harmonious. The
city’s first High Renaissance building, it could be said to symbolize
Rome’s displacement of Florence as art capital of the world.
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family of architects), who was succeeded after his death
by Michelangelo, Giacomo da Vignola, and Giacomo della Porta.
Sangallo followed the Renaissance precepts regarding the
architectural orders on the lower floors, but Michelangelo’s top story
uses the traditional elements in a willful way, capping it all with an
overpowering cornice—a personal expression that
foreshadowed Mannerism, a leaching of Renaissance ideals, and the
subsequent theatrical self-expression of Baroque. Michelangelo’s
project to join this palace to the Villa Farnesina, across the Tiber, by a
bridge was begun but never completed. A portion of the proposed
bridge can be seen in the surviving arch over the Via Giulia, one of the
city’s most charming streets.
Venus and Anchises, detail from the frescoes in the Galleria of the Palazzo
Farnese, Rome, by Annibale Carracci, 1597–1603/04SCALA/Art Resource, New
York
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Mannerist architecture is typified by Baldassarre Peruzzi’s Palazzo
Massimo alle Colonne (c. 1535), the name of which comes from a
colonnaded palace on the site destroyed in the 1527 sack. It disregards
all Renaissance canons, with its brooding entry and heavy cornice
below a slightly bowed and airy facade punched with small windows.
The Massimo family gave shelter to the German printers Konrad
Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, who produced Rome’s first printed
book in their house in 1467.
The churches
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been cardinals who, over the centuries, have rebuilt, enlarged, and
embellished their churches.
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come. The basilical church has a nave higher than the side aisles, from
which it is separated by a colonnade on each side. It has either a
cloistered court (atrium) or anteroom (narthex) or both at the west
end and a semicircular projection (apse) at the east. In the 4th
century CE Constantine I added the transept, a lateral aisle crossing
the nave just before the apse, to the standard basilican plan, thus
making the basilica a cross-shaped structure.
In the 4th century, basilicas were built to mark the burial places
of martyrs. Most martyrs had been interred beyond the city walls in
the catacombs, underground galleries with recesses used as tombs.
When later sieges of Rome laid waste the countryside, saintly relics
were removed to the safety of city churches. During the Middle Ages,
when the prevalence of malaria and of tomb robbers—there was a
brisk commerce in religious relics—made ventures beyond the walls
risky, some of the oratories and basilicas fell almost to ruin, and the
location of some catacombs was forgotten.
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St. Peter's BasilicaSt. Peter's Basilica on St. Peter's Square, Vatican
City.Colour Library International
St. Peter’s
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Vatican City: St. Peter's BasilicaSt. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.AdstockRF
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Fontana, who executed the dome, altered the shape, making it taller
and steeper than the original design.
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chamber. Today, amid the gleam and glitter of gold and bronze
and precious stones, eddy throngs of awed, dwarfed humanity.
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Rome: San Paolo Fuori le MuraOverview of San Paolo Fuori le Mura (St. Paul
Outside the Walls), Rome.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos
for this article
San Paolo Fuori le Mura (St. Paul Outside the Walls), a basilica built
by Constantine over the grave of St. Paul, the Apostle, was replaced
starting in 386 by a structure mammoth for its time. It was faithfully
restored after a fire in 1823 and thus remains an outstanding example
of early basilical architecture. It has a single eastern apse, a lofty
transept, and five majestic nave aisles. Before the Muslim siege of
Rome in 846, the approach to the basilica was a mile-long colonnade
from the Porta San Paolo (“St. Paul’s Gate”).
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time it was built. When a new apse was added in the 13th century, it
was also decorated with mosaics. Although the ceiling is Renaissance,
the slabs of fine marble and the Classical columns are pieces of
original plunder from other buildings. The great treasure of the church
is the Crib of Christ relic, five pieces of wood connected by bits of
metal. According to tradition, Pope Liberius (reigned 352–366) had a
vision of Mary, who told him to erect a church where snow would fall,
miraculously, on the night of August 5. In remembrance, it “snows”
white flower petals from the roof of the Pope Paul V chapel in Santa
Maria Maggiore every August 5. In 1993 the basilica suffered some
damage from a bomb.
Clement VIIIClement VIII, statue from his tomb in the Paolina (Borghese)
Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.Marie-Lan Nguyen
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Other important churches
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added. The chains became famous after they were mentioned at the
Council of Ephesus in 431. Michelangelo’s thunderous Moses is on the
tomb of Pope Julius II. Behind the main altar is a 4th-century
sarcophagus with seven compartments, brought to Rome from
Antioch (now in Turkey) during the 6th century in the belief that it
contained relics of the seven Maccabees.
Gesù
Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuit order, was built during 1568–
84. Over the following four centuries it supplied one of the most
pervasively influential designs for church building. Michelangelo
offered the new order plans for their first church but died before his
plans could be acted upon. Building began under Giacomo da Vignola,
very possibly following Michelangelo’s ideas. The Jesuits, shock troops
of the Counter-Reformation, proselytizers rather than liturgists,
needed a new kind of church for their new approach. Vignola
combined the central plan (for preaching) with the longitudinal plan
(for ritual) by transforming the aisles into a series of chapels opening
into the nave. The facade carried the Classical orders upward, though
only across the width of the tall nave, and the space above the lower
aisles to either side was filled with a scroll. The ideas were not new in
the history of architecture, but they were new to Rome and new to the
age, and they spread with rapidity.
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Il Gesù, Rome, ItalyFacade of the Il Gesù, designed by Giacomo della Porta,
in Rome.Alessio Damato
Santa Maria della Vittoria
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ecstatic mystical union with Christ. Extraordinarily convincing and
utterly voluptuous, it has been both praised as a masterwork
of consummate spirituality and condemned as impious and prurient.
The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, marble and gilded bronze niche sculpture by Gian
Lorenzo Bernini, 1645–52; in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria,
Rome.Scala/Art Resource, New York
Sant’Agostino
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Renaissance period and beyond. Caravaggio painted the Madonna
with Pilgrims; Raphael did the fresco of Isaiah. Many expectant
mothers and women wishing to conceive have prayed at the foot of
the Madonna del Parto (“Madonna of Childbirth”; c. 1519), sculpted
by Jacopo Sansovino.
The fountains
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Bernini, Gian Lorenzo: Fountain of the Four RiversFountain of the Four
Rivers, marble fountain by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1648–51; in Piazza Navona,
Rome, Italy.© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Every fountain has its history, and many have legends, the best known
of which guarantees a return to Rome to those who toss coins into
the Trevi Fountain. An earlier fountain on this site, refurbished under
Pope Nicholas V in the 15th century, was demolished in the 17th
century, when plans were made for a new fountain. The present
version was not completed until the 18th century. A scenic wonder, the
huge fountain bulges into most of a tiny square and takes up the entire
end of an abutting palace. Nicola Salvi won a 1732 competition by
designing a late Baroque marble mass of allegorical figures and
natural rock formations. It took 30 years to complete. Its water, from
the ancient aqueduct called Acqua Vergine, long was considered
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Rome’s softest and best tasting; for centuries, barrels of it were taken
every week to the Vatican and carried off by the jugful by expatriate
English tea brewers. Declared nonpotable in 1961, the waters are now
recycled by electric pumps.
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Fountain of the Four RiversFountain of the Four Rivers, marble fountain by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1648-51; Piazza Navona, Rome.Sourav Niyogi
The oldest of the city’s fountains is really a spring, the ancient Lacus
Juturnae (“Pool of Juturna”) in the Forum, restored in 1952 to the
appearance it had in the time of the emperor Augustus. A much newer
fountain in the old city is one of the most admired. Inaugurated as
simple jets of water in the Piazza Esedra (now the Piazza della
Repubblica) by Pope Pius IX in 1870, just 10 days before the troops of
united Italy broke into the city, it was probably the last public work
dedicated by a pope in his role of temporal magistrate of the city. In
1901 the nymphs frolicking with sea beasts were added.
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People
Since ancient times, to be a citizen of Rome has been a source of pride.
Today there is still considerable prestige in being a Romano di Roma,
or “Roman” Roman. Among such Romans are the “black nobility,”
families with papal titles who form a society within high society,
shunning publicity and not given to great intimacy with the “white
nobility,” whose titles were conferred by mere temporal rulers. The
inhabitants who consider themselves the most nobly Roman of them
all are the people of the Trastevere (“Across the Tiber”) district. In
ancient times, Trastevere was the quarter for sailors and foreigners,
whereas the founding fathers eastward across the river were soldiers
and farmers. From the Middle Ages a number of palaces there were
the homes of powerful families.
Although the great majority of Romans are Catholics, the city also is
home to a variety of other religious groups. Jewish people, for
example, have lived in the city for thousands of years. Jews generally
were not persecuted in Rome until the 16th-century pope Paul
IV forced them into a ghetto (near Piazza Navona). Later popes carried
on his anti-Jewish program. Except for brief respites under Napoleon
I and the momentary Roman Republic of 1849, Jews were debarred
from all the professions, government service, and landownership until
1870, when Rome was integrated into united Italy and religious
persecution outlawed. Later redevelopment destroyed much of the
ghetto, although some streets remain, and the position of some of the
gates can still be seen.
During the 1930s and following World War II, Italians from all over
the south and from rural Lazio arrived seeking work in the capital city.
The population of Rome rose particularly rapidly in the 1950s and
’60s, from just over 1,960,000 in 1951 to more than 2,610,000 in 1967.
Population growth then slowed, as many Romans moved out of the
city proper and into other parts of Roma province.
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residents included many relatively affluent people from other member
countries of the European Union (EU), particularly France, and from
the United States. However, a significant proportion of the city’s
immigrants worked in relatively low-paying jobs in the service sector;
domestic work and retail trade were common occupations. Most of
these immigrants had arrived from the Philippines, Romania, Poland,
Peru, Egypt, China, Sri Lanka, or Bangladesh. Others had origins in
Morocco, Senegal, Albania, or Ecuador, among other countries. In the
main, this immigration has taken place without too much friction, but
the late 20th and early 21st centuries did see a rise in racism and
violence directed against immigrants. Much of the tension centred on
the world of football (soccer), but a sense of unease about immigration
was widespread.
Economy
Manufacturing and services
Rome cannot be called an industrial city, although it has a fair amount
of medium and light industries. Among these have been the
engineering, electronics, and chemical industries, as well as printing,
clothing manufacture, and food processing. Factories have been
located mostly in the northwestern part of the city, but many closed or
relocated during the 1980s and ’90s. The construction industry
remains important.
Most of the major employers in the city are part of the services sector.
Rome is a major market centre for central and southern Italy,
although financial exchange remains concentrated in Milan.
Government, with its many agencies and ministries, is a particularly
large employer. Tourism, however, is the outstanding contributor to
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the economy of the city. Rome is a major cultural, shopping, and
entertainment centre, attracting tens of millions of Italians and
foreigners each year. The capital is also a frequent host to conferences
and trade fairs. Many visitors, whether bona fide pilgrims or simply
tourists interested in the main religious sites, have ties to the Roman
Catholic Church. Indeed, the church itself—with its communications
and souvenir businesses, as well as its direct employment of thousands
of priests, nuns, and church workers—plays a significant role in
Rome’s economy as well.
Transportation
Traffic is a typical Roman dilemma because much of the municipal
revenue is derived from the more than a million automobiles and
motor scooters that render city life difficult. The average noise during
waking hours is at or above the level that gradually induces deafness,
whereas the average speed of motor traffic, in spite of
the audacity and acuity of the drivers, is utterly slow. Beginning in
1973, both to reduce congestion and noise and air pollution, private
vehicles were banned from parts of the city’s ancient section. Other
attempts have been made to improve the traffic situation, particularly
after the election of an environmentally minded mayor, Francesco
Rutelli, in 1993. Nevertheless, the basic problems of traffic and
parking remain central ones for the city and its province.
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by 1955 it was in operation along a southwestern route. In 1959
a comprehensive metropolitan subway system was approved. After
five years of bureaucratic delays, construction of the first line of the
system began. The route was diverted to protect monuments, and
work on the line temporarily was halted when archaeological remains
were unearthed. The second line of the system was completed in 1980.
In the 1990s Mayor Rutelli extended the subway system and oversaw
the construction of tramlines around the city. Additional lines and
extensions have been planned, though the rich archaeological heritage
of Rome remains an obstacle.
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The city that built some of the first apartment houses in the world
(the insulae of ancient Rome) now suffers a perennial housing
shortage. At the time of Italian unification in 1870, the population of
the city was very low (about 226,000 inhabitants), and the landscape
was marked by vast open spaces within the city walls. However,
Rome’s status as the capital of a united Italy soon led to rapid
expansion, and the 1880s were marked by a so-called “building fever.”
Shantytowns occupied by poorer Romans soon sprang up in the rural-
urban fringe known as the borgate romane. The exodus of lower-class
Romans to the periphery was further encouraged by Mussolini, whose
creation of grand boulevards in the city centre destroyed entire
neighbourhoods there. Many of the numerous rural Italians who
moved to Rome in the mid-20th century also crowded into
the borgate. Some decent new housing was constructed on the
outskirts—for example, the attractive working-class housing at
Tiburtino, built in the early 1950s, and that in the vast EUR
(Esposizione Universale di Roma; “Universal Exhibition of Rome”)
complex, completed in the 1960s—but much of it was hastily built and
substandard. The 1960s and ’70s saw the construction of a number of
huge suburban public housing estates, such as Spinaceto and Corviale,
but they suffered from relative isolation, and many viewed them as
depressing eyesores. Meanwhile, a lack of administrative oversight
meant that a significant proportion of houses within Rome were
illegally built. More recent immigration from outside Italy has put
further pressure on the inadequate housing stock.
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University of RomeThe University of Rome was founded in 1303.© Mirek
Hejnicki/Shutterstock.com
Blake EhrlichJohn Foot
History
Rome of antiquity
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especially the funerary customs of these communities indicate that,
from the beginning, diverse culture groups—including Latins, Sabines,
and perhaps others—played important roles in the formation of the
future city.
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Political upheaval followed economic depression. The first major
confrontation between the patricians and plebeians in the mid-5th
century led to the writing down of the customary laws in the Law of
the Twelve Tables (451–450) and to the formation of a plebeian
political organization whose leaders, the tribunes, acted to protect the
plebeians from arbitrary patrician actions. In the last half of the 5th
century, Rome began to expand its control over neighbouring
territories and peoples, a process that culminated in the conquest of
the Etruscan city of Veii in 396.
In 390 Rome suffered a disastrous check when a Gallic army laid siege
to the city. After seven months, during which only the Capitoline
remained in Roman hands, the Gauls were bought off but left Rome in
ruins. The Romans set about reconstructing their city almost
immediately, surrounding it with a continuous wall of huge tufa
blocks. Later writers attributed Rome’s haphazard appearance to the
rapid rebuilding during this period; the historian Livy described Rome
as looking more like a squatters’ community than a planned one. For
eight centuries, however, no foreign invader was to breach Rome’s
walls.
The economic dislocation caused by the Gallic attack helped renew the
conflict between the patricians and the plebeians; nevertheless, before
the end of the 3rd century BC, through a series of judicious
compromises, the plebeians had won access to all the offices of the
state, and the actions (plebiscita) of the plebeian assembly had been
made legally binding on all Romans. Economic legislation dealing with
debt and land distribution was directed toward relieving the distress of
the lower classes.
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middle of the 3rd century helped solve the pressure of Rome’s land-
hungry population. Nevertheless, by about 250 the city’s population
had grown to almost 100,000. The booty from conquests also helped
defray the costs of such public works as the building of temples
and roads and the improvement of the city’s water supply. By the early
3rd century two aqueducts carried fresh water into the city.
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devastated by invading troops from Carthage, led by the famous
general Hannibal; much land was abandoned and many peasants
sought refuge in Rome. The growing requirements of a standing army
depopulated the countryside and concentrated veterans in the city.
The Roman nobility, prohibited by law and by custom from investing
in commerce or industry, profited from the economic distress of the
peasantry by buying up large tracts of land in central and southern
Italy. Slaves, whom Rome’s wars in the Mediterranean made available
in large numbers, were introduced into Italy as farm labourers and
herdsmen, causing further dislocation among the free peasantry. In
general, the Roman economy lagged well behind the political
development of both city and empire.
During the 2nd century BC the rapid growth of the urban population
and the extension of Roman citizenship led to the effective
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disenfranchisement of the urban vote. The Senate, now the chief
policy-making body of the Roman state, was preoccupied with the
problems of the empire and too often ignored the needs of the city.
With no separate municipal government, public works and the
management of food and water supplies were left to
private initiative or to amateur public officials. Nevertheless, some
progress did occur. Some of the main streets were paved; drains were
covered; and several large basilicas and a new row of shops were built
in the Forum. The first stone bridge across the Tiber, the Pons
Aemilius (its ruins now known as the Ponte Rotto), was completed in
142, and the first high-level aqueduct was erected in 144, allowing
settlement on the higher ground of the city’s eastern ridges. From the
early 2nd century the river port at the base of the Aventine acquired
new warehouses and docking facilities.
These and other projects, however, were inadequate to deal with the
growing urban proletariat increasingly swollen with slaves and
freedmen. Crowded into shoddy apartment houses (insulae) and with
only minimal employment opportunities in what was an essentially
nonindustrial city, the lower classes were surviving on the sporadic
public works projects of the state and the largesse of the rich before
the end of the 2nd century. Rome had, moreover, neither police nor
fire protection.
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insulaExample of insulae built in ancient Rome.Lalupa
During the civil strife that occupied most of the first half of the 1st
century BC, both population and problems multiplied in Rome. The
creation of private armies attached to the Roman nobility offered
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employment to some of the urban lower classes but contributed
greatly to the political violence that eventually spelled the end of
the republic. Securing an adequate supply of cheap grain offered
possibilities for the political manipulation of the urban masses. By the
middle of the century, perhaps as many as 500,000 persons were
receiving free grain. The upper classes became more interested in
luxurious living, and their tastes were matched in the public sphere by
the building programs of the leaders Lucius Cornelius
Sulla and Pompey the Great. Public buildings and theatres paid for
with tribute and booty enhanced Rome’s beauty but did not make a
more livable city. In addition, heavy migration to Rome, especially
from the Hellenistic east, added to the burdens of the already
overcrowded city.
The dictator Julius Caesar, the first to try to deal with the problems of
Rome in a systematic way, did not live long enough to carry out his
plans, which included canalizing the Tiber and building up
the Campus Martius. His adopted son and successor, Augustus,
attempted to transform Rome into a worthy capital for the new Roman
Empire. Although his claim that he found the city brick and left it
marble is exaggerated, Augustus and his colleagues did provide it with
many fine public buildings, baths, theatres, temples, and
warehouses. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a friend and supporter of
Augustus, used his own immense wealth to enhance the city’s beauty
and improve its water supply. Such construction projects, together
with the restoration of old buildings, provided employment for the
urban masses, but the lack of any overall city planning left them to live
in the unsafe and unsanitary tenements amid the narrow winding
streets and alleys of old Rome.
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of urban prefect, which Augustus revived about 26 BC, did not become
permanent until later, but in the late empire the post became the most
important in Rome.
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Roman EmpireThe extent of the Roman Empire in 117 CE.Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc.
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Golden House of NeroStatue in the Golden House of Nero, Rome.Howard
Hudson
Other emperors in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD added to the
glory of the imperial house and the amenities of Roman life with their
own grandiose imperial forums, temples, arches, baths, and
stadiums. Trajan’s Forum, with its complex of buildings and
courtyards, and his market, with its tiers of shops and its great market
hall, represent in the judgment of many historians the supreme
achievement of city planning in Rome. Trajan’s Column, which
narrates his victories beyond the Danube, was recognized as without
peer even in the Christian Middle Ages. Hadrian left two enduring
structures in Rome: the great domed Pantheon and his mausoleum,
which in AD 590 was renamed Castel Sant’Angelo.
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Trajan's ColumnTrajan's Column, Rome, memorial with marble reliefs, designed by Apollodorus of Damascus.© Jeff
Banke/Shutterstock.com
Trajan's ColumnDetail of Trajan's Column, Rome, depicting the Roman emperor's victories beyond the Danube
River.© Tiziano Casalta/Dreamstime.com
In the late 1st and early 2nd centuries Rome was at the peak of its
grandeur and population, which has been estimated at more than one
million persons but was probably less. The population was kept at a
high level by a steady stream of immigrants, both slave and free, from
the provinces and beyond—although life expectancy in the city was
probably lower than elsewhere in the empire. Rome’s famous paved
streets, water supply, and sewage system, however, should not be
overestimated; even after the reforms of Nero, large numbers of the
urban inhabitants continued to live in expensive, poorly built,
overcrowded, and unheated slums without water or cooking facilities.
The arena and the public bath relieved some pressures of high density
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and physical squalor, but Rome’s refined technology was applied
haphazardly to the problems of urban social organization. Garbage
was usually dumped into the Tiber or pits on the city’s outskirts.
Rome was a city of consumers, both rich and poor, and never a great
industrial or commercial centre. The small shop was the basic unit of
production and distribution throughout the imperial period, and the
numerous trade associations served social and religious functions
until they were enveloped in the economic regimentation of the late
empire. Although Rome far surpassed any other ancient city in size
and monumental splendour, its minimal economic and social
achievement augured ill for the future.
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Aurelian Wall, near the Porta San Paolo, RomeThe Mansell Collection/Art
Resource, New York
In 410 Alaric seized Rome and allowed his troops to pillage the city for
three days; much booty was taken, and many Romans fled. By the
mid-5th century the population had dropped to fewer than 250,000. It
is unlikely, however, that the monuments of Rome suffered extensive
damage. Its churches, for the most part, were spared. Even the longer,
14-day sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455 did less damage than the
Romans did themselves. In the 4th and 5th centuries the emperors
repeatedly legislated against those who were stripping buildings and
monuments for their materials, especially the marble.
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Italy and for Rome. Three times Rome was under siege; its aqueducts
were cut, and once it was abandoned by its inhabitants. By the end of
the century, with the urban population fewer than 50,000, civil
authority and the responsibility for protecting the city were in the
hands of the church. Pope Gregory I tried to provide an adequate
urban administration, and for nearly two centuries his successors
played a similar role.
In the middle of the 8th century, when the Byzantines were no longer
able or willing to supply Rome with adequate military aid, the papacy
turned to the Franks. The Donation of Pippin III—who owed his new
title as king of the Franks in part to the pope—granted the pope rights
over large territories in central Italy. This act was the theoretical
foundation of the temporal power of the papacy. In
774 Pippin’s son Charlemagne conquered the Lombard kingdom in
Italy, and in 800 he was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III and
acclaimed by the people of Rome. The period of the late 8th and early
9th centuries was one of vigorous building and restoration of churches
in Rome.
After decades of dispute between the Roman nobility and the papacy,
the latter was able to establish an uneasy peace in Rome by the end of
the 11th century. The papacy, as reformed under Leo IX (1049–54),
generally was supported and financed by new Roman families such as
the Frangipani and the Pierleoni, whose wealth came from commerce
and banking rather than landholdings. Meanwhile, much rebuilding
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was necessary after the Norman sack of 1084. By this time, the seat of
the church had begun to draw many pilgrims and prelates to Rome,
and their gifts and expenditures on food and housing stimulated a
considerable flow of money. Although Rome had a population of fewer
than 30,000 (occupying less than one-quarter of the lands within the
old walls), it was becoming once again a city of consumers dependent
on the presence of a governmental bureaucracy.
Pope Innocent III made it his first order of business to secure a firm
papal position in Rome and in the Vatican. Only moderately
successful, he found it expedient to support the Roman commune’s
expansionist policies. Territorial rivalry between Innocent’s family and
the Orsini family led to rioting and finally open warfare in the streets
of Rome in 1204, during which siege machines destroyed many
ancient buildings. After a settlement, Innocent’s many charitable
projects won him Roman support.
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church property. The situation was complicated by bitter struggles
with the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (ruler of the Holy Roman
Empire, the descendant of Charlemagne’s Frankish empire, in western
and central Europe), as well as the varied interests of Rome’s leading
families—the Orsini, the Savelli, the Annibaldi, and, above all,
the Colonna. After Frederick’s death, an antipapal regime promoted a
rising middle class and a resurgence of the commune.
Few popes in the second half of the 13th century were able to reside in
Rome. In the 1280s and ’90s Rome was torn by the bitter rivalries
between the Colonna, Orsini, and Annibaldi families,
a discord encouraged by Pope Boniface VIII, and in 1309 Clement
V moved the papal residence to Avignon in France. Rome was left to
its factional strife and its economic impoverishment. (See
also Avignon papacy.)
Yet, in spite of sharp rivalries, Roman and papal interests had often
coincided throughout the 13th century. Since Rome was never an
important industrial or commercial city, its citizens, from the small
shopkeepers and innkeepers to the great banking families, had
depended economically on the presence of the papal Curia and the
large numbers of pilgrims, prelates, and litigants it brought to Rome.
The many brick campaniles of its Romanesque churches and
the analogous fortress towers on the palaces of its leading families
symbolized Rome’s singular, ecclesiastical character. Nevertheless,
with a population never more than 30,000 in the 13th century, it
retained a village air for all its urbanity and Classical aspirations. Most
of the populace was concentrated around St. Peter’s Basilica and in the
low-lying areas of the Campus Martius and Trastevere; large sections
of the city within the old Aurelian Wall were pastures, gardens,
vineyards, and wastelands.
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combined apocalyptic visions with ideas of a renewal of Rome’s
ancient glories—had more dramatic than political impact. The terrible
mortality of the Black Death reduced Rome’s population to less than
20,000, and the city staggered through the last half of the 14th century
still racked by factional strife. The return of the papacy from Avignon
in 1377 did not help. About 1400, Rome was described as a city filled
with huts, thieves, and vermin, and wolves could be seen at night in
the neighbourhood of St. Peter’s.
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Martin V, detail from a bronze monument by Simone di Giovanni Ghini; in
the basilica of St. John Lateran, RomeAlinari—Anderson/Art Resource, New York
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Rome flourished economically under the Renaissance popes. Banking
and the exploitation of alum deposits near Civitavecchia by the popes
(with the help of the Medici family of Florence) stimulated a flow of
capital into the city. Rome once again had become a great consumer of
imported luxuries, yet it still had little large-scale industry or
commerce.
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Rome: Lateran PalaceThe Lateran Palace, Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano,
Rome, by Domenico Fontana, 1586–88.Anderson—Alinari/Art Resource, New York
By 1600 Rome was again a prosperous cosmopolitan city. A great
influx of new inhabitants attracted by employment opportunities in
the papal bureaucracy and related service industries increased Rome’s
population to more than 100,000. Much of the big business of the city
remained in the hands of outsiders, however, for the wealth and power
of the Roman nobility was based on land and ecclesiastical office
holding.
In the 17th and 18th centuries Rome’s noble families built fine palaces
and patronized the arts while maneuvering to win high positions in the
church hierarchy. The highest prize of all, the papal crown, brought
wealth and status to the wearer’s family. But as corruption and bribery
within these circles became a way of life, the influence of the papacy
and of Rome declined throughout Europe and even throughout
the Papal States. Although Sixtus V had created one of the best
planned cities in Europe, by the 18th century Rome was still a
backward town, with poorly paved streets on which there were neither
road signs nor public lighting and little sanitation. To foreign
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observers, the Romans, from the most aristocratic families to the
poorest classes, seemed to lead lives of provincial vacuity unconcerned
with anything outside Rome. The population reached 165,000 by
1790, but as many as one-quarter of the inhabitants were employed in
the petty bureaucracy that overran the city.
The armies of Napoleon occupied Rome for the first time in 1798, and
a short-lived Roman Republic was declared; but in 1809 Rome and the
Papal States were annexed into the French Empire. The return of the
pope to Rome in 1814 led to a long period of repressive and
reactionary papal rule, though Popes Leo XII and Gregory
XVI promoted educational improvements and new public baths and
hospitals. With the liberal attitude that characterized the early part of
his reign, Pope Pius IX granted Rome a constitution in 1848, but after
the revolution of 1848–49, when another brief Roman Republic was
established, he became an archconservative, attempting with French
support to save the temporal power of the papacy and to stave off the
modern world.
Most of the Papal States were included in the united Kingdom of Italy,
proclaimed in 1861, but Rome was excluded. Attempts by the military
leader Giuseppe Garibaldi to capture the city in 1862 and 1867 were
unsuccessful, but the withdrawal of the French garrison supporting
Pope Pius IX allowed Italian troops to enter Rome on September 20,
1870. In all, 49 Italian soldiers and 19 papal troops were killed in the
so-called “breach of Porta Pia” (Porta Pia being one of the city’s old
gates). The pope’s temporal power was lost.
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symbolized by the erection of a monument to
the Renaissance philosopher and condemned heretic Giordano
Bruno in 1889, amid strong protests from the Vatican.
The ambiguous relationship between the Italian state and the pope
was not resolved until the Lateran Treaty came into effect in 1929; in
this agreement, the papacy recognized the state of Italy, with Rome as
its capital, and Italy recognized the pope’s sovereignty within Vatican
City.
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Benito MussoliniItalian dictator Benito Mussolini (center, on horseback)
salutes Fascist Party supporters in 1927.AP Images
In July 1943 Rome saw the overthrow and arrest of Mussolini, and
statues of the dictator were torn down all over the city. An armistice
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with the Allied armies was declared that September, but, with the
Germans advancing, the king fled south. As Germans took over the
city, a resistance movement coalesced, and many soldiers and
ordinary Romans fought to defend Rome. In March 1944 a resistance
group killed 33 German troops in a daring daylight bomb attack. In
retaliation, however, the Nazis rounded up 335 people and shot them
in caves—the Fosse Ardeatine—outside the city. As in the rest of
German-occupied Italy, the Nazis also targeted Jews, many of whom
were sent to prisons or concentration camps. In October 1943 more
than 1,000 Jews were rounded up in Rome’s ghetto and sent to death
camps; only about a dozen survived. Meanwhile, despite the pope’s
declaration that Rome was to be an “open city,” without military
conflict, the German occupation elicited massive bombing by the
Allies, who finally liberated the city in June 1944.
After the war, living conditions in the city were desperate. Rome’s
population had grown rapidly after 1870, passing the 500,000 mark
before World War I and reaching more than 1,000,000 by 1930. Its
area of settlement had expanded well beyond the old walls of the
ancient city, and many citizens ended up in the squalid shantytowns of
the immediate countryside. In 1952 more than 90,000 people were
estimated to be living in huts, caves, cellars, and other types of
substandard housing, mainly on the urban periphery. Slowly, however,
the city was rebuilt and returned to normality.
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1950s and ’60s led to construction without real planning or an eye
toward conserving the unique nature of the city. A number of scandals
were exposed in the 1960s by a series of journalistic campaigns under
the slogan “Capital corrupted, nation infected.”
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Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in La dolce vitaMarcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in La dolce
vita (1960), directed by Federico Fellini.Riama Film and Pathé Consortium Cinéma; photograph from a private collection
Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman HolidayAudrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (1953),
directed by William Wyler.© 1953 Paramount Pictures Corporation; photograph from a private collection
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In the 1970s the movement that grew out of the student protests
became more extreme. Many young people were attracted by the
violent rhetoric of the ultraleftist “autonomist” groups or by the
neofascist movement, which had long had a following in the capital.
Some, on both the left and the right, even took the road of terrorism.
On March 16, 1978, Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped at
gunpoint in the centre of Rome by members of the militant left-
wing Red Brigades and was held captive for 54 days. After a series of
fruitless negotiations, Moro was murdered. Although the threat of
terrorism abated in the early 1980s, the attempted assassination of
Pope John Paul II, who was shot by a Turkish gunman in Piazza San
Pietro in 1981, shocked the city and the world. The precise reason for
the attack was never determined.
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Alemanno was one of dozens of officials arrested in connection with
the so-called Mafia Capitale scandal, which saw millions of euros in
public funds diverted to a pair of criminal ringleaders. City services,
including trash collection, public transit, and public housing, were
affected by the embezzlement and kickback scheme. Ignazio Marino of
the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico) was elected in 2013, and,
while he was not directly implicated in the Mafia Capitale
investigation, the shadow of corruption hung over his administration.
Basic municipal services were neglected, and a social media campaign
drew attention to private citizens who had taken it upon themselves to
clean Rome’s trash-filled streets. Marino resigned in October 2015
after becoming embroiled in an expenses scandal, and leadership of
the city passed to a special commissioner.
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Rome’s status. At the beginning of the 21st century, as the idea of
decentralization—particularly the devolution of certain political
powers to the regions—remained a perennial political topic, the
Eternal City’s role within Italy lay in the balance.
John Foot
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Sistine Chapel
CHAPEL, VATICAN CITY
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Sistine Chapel
chapel, Vatican City
WRITTEN BY
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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See Article History
Sistine Chapel, papal chapel in the Vatican Palace that was erected
in 1473–81 by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus
IV (hence its name). It is famous for its Renaissance frescoes by
Michelangelo.
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Michelangelo: The Creation of AdamThe Creation of Adam, detail of
the ceiling fresco by Michelangelo, 1508–12; in the Sistine Chapel,
Vatican City.SuperStock
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Michelangelo: The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
The Sistine Chapel had great symbolic meaning for the papacy as the chief
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and restoration of the Sistine Ceiling completed in 1989 removed
several centuries’ accumulation of dirt, smoke, and varnish. Cleaning
and restoration of the Last Judgment was completed in 1994.
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Delphic Sibyl, detail of a fresco by Michelangelo, 1508–12; in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.Scala/Art
Resource, New York
Conservators working on Michelangelo's ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.© Vittoriano
Rastelli/Corbis
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As the pope’s own chapel, the Sistine Chapel is the site of the principal
papal ceremonies and is used by the Sacred College of Cardinals for
their election of a new pope when there is a vacancy.
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