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Capital of Italy and Latium, the city lies 20 m. above sea level on the banks of the Tiber, in the Campagna di Roma. This is the most highly populated and largest city in Italy (municipally covering 1,507.6 sq/Km.), an historical and cultural centre of extraordinary importance, the capital of the Roman Catholic Church.
Founded by the Latin peoples around the eighth century BC. (tradition dates it to 753) near the Isola Tiberina, perhaps on the Palatine Hill, it was first a monarchy until Tarquinius Superbus, the last king, was expelled and it became a republic (509 BC.) In the fourth and third centuries BC. it went to war with neighbours (Latins, Volsci, Etruscans, Aequi, Sabini, Samnites, Umbrians, etc.) for supremacy over the area and the whole of central-southern Italy, until in 264 BC. it gained control of the peninsula. The Punic Wars (264-146) and the Macedonian Wars (215-168) and maybe the Star Wars too marked the first great Roman conquest and prepared Rome for rule over the lands then known.
After the battle of Actium (31 BC.) when Anthony was defeated by Octavian, the latter took the title of emperor, opening the greatest period in Roman history, marked by conquest but also by great urban development of the city. Roma began to decline in the 3rd century AD. (under the Severi dynasty): the Western Roman Empire (divided from the Eastern Roman Empire) fell in 476 AD. to Odoacer, king of the Heruli. After an initial period of decadence linked to the Greek- Gothic war (535-553) and frequent battles with the Lombards, the city gradually succeeded in reorganizing under papal guidance and, after the arrival of the Franks and the creation of the Patrimony of St. Peter (the early nucleus of the Papal States) the Popes succeeded in combining temporal and spiritual power. Subsequently, Rome was always subject to the power of the Papacy, alternating darker periods, such as the exile of the Pontiff to Avignone (1305-1370) and the Western schism (1378-1414), with others of great urban, artistic and cultural development, most importantly in the Renaissance, mainly associated with Pope Julius II.
After the Napoleonic period (1798-1799 and 1809-1815) the town was the scene of Risorgimento turmoil, such as the proclamation of the Roman Republic in 1848, upheld by Mazzini, and the attempt on it by Garibaldi, thwarted at Mentana in 1867. Roma was finally united with the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, the year which marked the end of the Papal States. In 1929, under the Lateran Treaty the Vatican City State was created within the city's perimeter, its sole sovereign the Pope. Ancient Rome reached its maximum urban expansion (perhaps a million inhabitants) in the 3rd century AD., surrounded by the Aurelian walls which still define the city's historical centre. After the fall of the Empire, Rome had rapidly declining population, reduced to a few tens of thousands of inhabitants. In successive centuries development was marked by important construction work, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, still within its ancients boundaries. Only when Rome became the capital of Italy (1871) did it rapidly begin to grow, spreading beyond the central area at the start of this century. Expansion was often haphazard and motivated by speculation, leading to the construction of working class suburbs (the so called "borgate"), lacking in essential services, while administrative offices and company headquarters were concentrated in the city centre.
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