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Rome (From Wikipedia)
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Rome (Italian and Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy, and the country's largest and most populous comune, with about 2.5 million residents (3.8 million considering the whole urbanised area, as represented by the Province of Rome). Capital of the Lazio region of central-eastern Italy, Rome is located across the confluence of the river Aniene into the Tiber. With a gross domestic product of €97 billion in the year 2005, the comune of Rome produced 6.7% of Italy's GDP, which is the highest proportion of GDP produced by any single Italian comune. The current Mayor of Rome is Walter Veltroni.

Founded on April 21, 753 BC by the twins Romulus and Remus, according to legend, Rome was once the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, the most powerful, largest and longest-lasting empire of classical Western civilisation; after the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, it became the seat of the Pope and centre of the Catholic Church, as well as capital of the Papal States. Rome was conquered by the newly unified Kingdom of Italy in 1870, witnessed the rise of Italian fascism, and finally became capital of the current Italian Republic and one of the largest cities of the European Union. The Vatican City is still contained as a sovereign enclave within the city territory.

Rome, whose city centre is a UNESCO world heritage site hosting some of the world's best known works of art and monuments, is also called "la Città Eterna" (the Eternal City), "l'Urbe" (Latin for "the City" as an antonomasia) and "la città dei sette colli" ("the city of the seven hills").

From Founding to Empire

The founding of Rome is shrouded in legend, but current archeological evidence support 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 (in which the Senate had predominance), and finally the Roman Empire (ruled by an Emperor); this success depended on military conquest, commercial predominance, as well as selective assimilation of neighbouring civilisations, most notably the Etruscans and Greeks. 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.

Fall of Empire to the Rise of Papacy

After the sack of 410 and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, 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. 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 and capital of the Papal States; the city became a major pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages and the focus of struggles between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire started by Charlemagne, who had been crowned in Rome itself.

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 acitivity during the Renaissance, thanks to the maecenatism of the nepotist Papal court. Population rose again and reached 100,000 during the 17th century, but Rome ultimately lagged behind the rest of the European capitals over the subsequent centuries, being largely busy in the Counter-Reformation process.

From Unification to Fascism

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 favour of the Italian Republic.

Republican Era

Rome grew momentously after the war, as one of the driving forces behind the "Italian economic miracle" of post-war reconstruction and modernisation. It became a fashionable city in the 1950s and early 1960s, the years of "la Dolce Vita" ("the sweet life"), and a new rising trend in population continued till the mid-1980s, 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,especially because of the continuously jammed traffic and the worsening pollution it brings about.

Language

The original language of Rome was Latin, which evolved during the Middle Ages into Italian. The latter emerged as the confluence of various regional dialects, among which the Tuscan dialect predominated, but the population Rome also developed its own dialect, the Romanesco. This remained largely confined to Rome until the 19th century, but then expanded into the rest of Lazio from the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to the rising population of Rome and to better transportations systems; as a consequence, Romanesco abandoned its traditional forms to mutate into the dialect currently spoken within the city, which is more similar to standard Italian, although remaining distinct from other Romanesco-influenced local dialects of Lazio. Dialectal literature in the traditional form Romanesco includes the works of such authors as Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Trilussa, and Cesare Pascarella. Contemporary Romanesco is mainly represented by popular actors such as Aldo Fabrizi, Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Gigi Proietti, Enrico Montesano, and Carlo Verdone.

Vatican City

The city of Rome surrounds the Vatican City, the enclave of the Holy See, which is a separate sovereign state. It hosts Saint Peter's Square with the Saint Peter's Basilica. The open space before the basilica was redesigned by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, from 1656 to 1667, under the direction of Pope Alexander VII, as an appropriate forecourt, designed "so that the greatest number of people could see the Pope give his blessing, either from the middle of the façade of the church or from a window in the Vatican Palace" (Norwich 1975 p 175). In Vatican City there are also the prestigiuous Vatican Museums with the Sistine Chapel, the Raphael Rooms and other important works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Giotto, Botticelli..