Guide turistiche

Rome (Italian: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and of the Lazio region, as well as the country's largest and most populous comune, with about 2.5 million residents. Its metropolitan area is Italy's third, after Milan and Naples. It is located in the central-western portion of the Italian peninsula, where the river Aniene joins the Tiber. The current Mayor of Rome is Walter Veltroni.

According to legend, the city of Rome was founded by the twins Romulus and Remus on April 21, 753 BC. Archaeological evidence supports claims that Rome was inhabited since the 8th century BC and earlier.[2] The city was the cradle of Roman civilization that produced the largest and longest-lasting empire of classical antiquity.[citation needed] The city was pivotal and responsible for the spread of Greco-Roman culture that endures to this day. Rome is also identified with the Catholic Church and the holders of its episcopal seat are the popes. An enclave of Rome is the State of the Vatican City, the sovereign territory of the Holy See and smallest nation in the world.

Rome, Caput mundi ("capital of the world"), la Città Eterna ("the Eternal City"), Limen Apostolorum ("threshold of the Apostles"), la città dei sette colli ("the city of the seven hills") or simply l'Urbe ("the City"),[3] is thoroughly modern and cosmopolitan. As one of the few major European cities that escaped World War II relatively unscathed, central Rome remains essentially Renaissance and Baroque in character. The Historic Centre of Rome is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site[4].


History Rome


The founding of Rome is shrouded in legend such as the story of Romulus and Remus, but archaeological evidence supports the theory that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill and in the area of the future Roman Forum, coalescing into a city in the 8th century BC. That city developed into the capital of the Roman Kingdom (ruled by a succession of seven kings, according to tradition), Roman Republic (from 510 BC, governed by the Senate), and finally the Roman Empire (from 31 BC, ruled by an Emperor); this success depended on military conquest, commercial predominance, as well as selective assimilation of neighboring civilizations, most notably the Etruscans and Greeks. Roman dominance expanded over most of Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean sea, while its population surpassed one million inhabitants. For almost a thousand years, Rome was the most politically important, richest and largest city in the Western world, and remained so after the Empire started to decline and was split, even if it ultimately lost its capital status to Milan and then Ravenna, and was surpassed in prestige by the Eastern capital Constantinople.

With the rise of early Christianity, the Bishop of Rome gained religious as well as political importance, eventually becoming known as the Pope and establishing Rome as the centre of the Catholic Church. After the Sack of Rome (410) by Alaric I and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, Rome alternated between Byzantine rule and plundering by Germanic barbarians. 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.

Rome remained the capital of the Papal States until its annexation into 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 on Christmas 800 AD by Pope Leo III. Apart from brief periods as an independent city during the Middle Ages, Rome kept its status of Papal capital and "holy city" for centuries, even when the Pope briefly relocated to Avignon (1309–1337). While no longer politically powerful, as tragically shown by the brutal sack of 1527, the city flourished as a hub of cultural and artistic activity during the Renaissance and the Baroque, under the patronage of the Papal court. Population rose again and reached 100,000 during the 17th century AD, but Rome ultimately lagged behind the rest of the European capitals over the subsequent centuries, being largely busy in the Counter-Reformation process.

Caught up in the nationalistic turmoils of the 19th century and having twice gained and lost a short-lived independence, Rome became the focus of the hopes for Italian unification, as propelled by the Kingdom of Italy ruled by King Vittorio Emanuele II; after the French protection was lifted in 1870, royal troops stormed the city, and Rome was declared capital of the newly unified Italy in 1871. After a victorious World War I, Rome witnessed the rise to power of Italian fascism guided by Benito Mussolini, who marched on the city in 1922, eventually declared a new Empire and allied Italy with Nazi Germany. This was a period of rapid growth in population, from the 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 favor 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 1950's and early 1960's, the years of "'la Dolce Vita'" ("the sweet life"), and a new rising trend in population continued till the mid-1980's, when the comune had more than 2,800,000 residents; after that, population started to slowly decline as more residents moved to nearby comuni; this has been attributed to their perceiving a decrease in the quality of life,[citation needed] especially because of the continuously jammed traffic and the worsening pollution it brings about.


Main sights Rome


The list of most important museums and galleries of Rome includes: the National Museum of Rome, the Museum of Roman Civilization, the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum, the Capitoline Museums, the Borghese Gallery, the Museum of Castel Sant'Angelo, the National Gallery of Modern Art.

The center of Rome is surrounded by some large green areas and opulent ancient villas, which are the remains of the crowns of villas which encircled the papal city. Most of them were largely destroyed by real estate speculation at the end of the 19th century. The most important among the surviving ones are: Villa Borghese, with a large landscape garden in the naturalistic 19th century English style, containing a number of buildings, museums (see Galleria Borghese) and attractions; Villa Ada, the largest public landscaped park of Rome; Villa Doria Pamphili, the second largest with an area of 1.8 km²; Villa Torlonia, a splendid example of Art Nouveau mansion that was the Roman residence of Benito Mussolini; Villa Albani, commissioned by Alessandro Cardinal Albani to house his collection of antiquities and Roman sculpture, which soon filled the casino that faced the Villa down a series of formal parterres.

The Fascist regime that ruled in Italy between 1922 and 1943 developed an original architectural style, characterized by feast and the research of a link with ancient Rome architecture. The most important fascist style site in Rome is the E.U.R. district, built in 1935. It was originally conceived for the 1942 world exhibition, and was called "E.42" ("Esposizione 42"). However, the world exhibition never took place due to Italy entering 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 labeled the cubic or Square Colosseum. After World War II, the Roman authorities found that they already had a gem of an off-centre business district that other capitals were still planning (London Docklands and La Defense in Paris). Also the Palazzo della Farnesina, the actual seat of Italian Foreign Ministry, was designed in 1935 in fascist style.