Rome Italy Guide and Tourism

Rome is a city and special comune (named "Roma Capitale") in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and also of the Province of Rome and of the region of Lazio. With 2.9 million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi), it is also the country's largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The urban area of Rome extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of around 3.8 million.Between 3.2 and 4.2 million people live in Rome metropolitan area.The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of Tiber river. Vatican City is an independent country within the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been often defined as capital of two states.
Rome's history spans more than two and a half thousand years, since its legendary founding in 753 BC. Rome is one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in Europe. It is referred to as "The Eternal City and "Caput Mundi" (English: Capital of the World), two central notions in ancient Roman culture. In the ancient world it was successively the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and is regarded as one of the birthplaces of Western civilization. Since the 1st century AD, Rome has been considered the seat of the Papacy and in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. In 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic.
After the Middle Ages, almost all the popes since Nicholas V (1422–55) pursued coherently along four hundred years an architectonic and urbanistic program aimed to make of the city the world's artistic and cultural center. Due to that, Rome became first one of the major centers of the Italian Renaissance along with Florence, and then the birthplace of the Baroque style. Famous artists and architects, such as Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael and Bernini made the city the center of their activity, creating masterpieces like St Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, Raphael Rooms and St. Peter's Square.
Rome has the status of a global city.In 2011, Rome was the 18th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy.Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the world's most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the After the legendary foundation by Romulus, Rome was ruled for a period of 244 years by a monarchical system, initially with sovereigns of Latin and Sabine origin, later by Etruscan kings. The tradition handed down seven kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquin the Proud.

In 509 BC the Romans expelled from the city the last king and established an oligarchic republic: since then, for Rome began a period characterized by internal struggles between patricians (aristocrats) and plebeians (small landowners), and by constant warfare against the populations of central Italy: Etruscans, Latins, Volsci, Aequi.[26] After becoming master of Latium, Rome led several wars (against the Gauls, Osci-Samnites and the Greek colony of Taranto, allied with Pyrrhus, king of Epirus) whose result was the conquest of the Italian peninsula, from the central area up to Magna Graecia.
The third and second century BC saw the establishment of the Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean and the East, through the three Punic Wars (264-146 BC) fought against the city of Carthage and the three Macedonian Wars (212-168 BC) against Macedonia. Then were established the first Roman provinces: Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Spain, Macedonia, Greece (Achaia), Africa.
From the beginning of the 2nd century BC, the power was contended between two groups of aristocrats: the optimates, representing the conservative part of the Senate, and the populares, which relied on the help of the urban populace to gain the power. In the same period, the bankruptcy of the small farmers and the establishment of large slave estates provoked the migration to the city of a large number of people. The continuous warfare made necessary a professional army, which was more loyal to its chiefs than to the republic. Due to that, in the second half of the second century and during the first century BC saw fights abroad and at home: after the failed attempt of social reform of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and the war against Jugurtha,[there was a first civil war between Gaius Marius and Sulla. To this followed the slave revolt under Spartacus,and the establishment of a first Triumvirate with Caesar, Pompey and Crassus.

The conquest of Gaul let rise the star of Caesar, who fought a second civil war against the Senate and Pompey and, after his victory, established a lifelong dictatorship.His assassination led to a second Triumvirate among Octavian (Caesar's nephew and heir), Mark Antony and Lepidus, and to another civil war between the Octavian and Antony. The former in 27 BC became princeps civitatis and got the title of Augustus, founding the principate, a diarchy between the princeps and the senate. Established de facto the empire, which reached its greatest expansion in the second century under the Emperor Trajan, Rome was confirmed as caput Mundi, i.e. the capital of the world, an expression which had already been given in the Republican period. During its first two centuries the empire saw as rulers, after Octavian Augustus, the emperors of the Julio-Claudian,Flavian (who also built eponymous amphitheater, known as the Colosseum)and Antonine dynasties.This time was also characterized by the spread of the Christian religion, preached by Jesus Christ in Judea in the first half of the century (under Tiberius) and popularized by his apostles through the empire. The Antonine age is considered the apogee of the Empire, whose territory ranged from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates, from the central-northern part of Britain to Egypt.
The Roman Empire at its greatest extent controlled approximately 6.5 million square kilometres of land surface.
In the third century, at the end of the Antonine dynasty, with the Severan dynasty the principatus was substituted by a military government, which was soon followed by a period of military anarchy, while the economy deteriorated, the inflation rose and the historical enemies of Rome, the Germanic tribes in the West and the Persian Empire in the East, bore a continue pressure on the frontiers.
Emperor Diocletian  fought the economic and military problems introducing the dominate, an absolute monarchy where the emperor was deified, imposing the price control and decentralising the administration: the emperor divided the empire into twelve dioceses, ruling under the title of Augustus the eastern half (with residence in Nicomedia) and naming Maximian Augustus of the western half, whose capital was moved to Mediolanum.The succession was regulated with the creation of the Tetrarchy: each Augustus, in fact, had to appoint a junior emperor, named Caesar, which would rule part of the roman territory on behalf of his Augustus and which would become, at the end, the new emperor.
After the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305 and many dynastic fights, this system collapsed, and the new ruler, Constantine, centralized power again and, with the Edict of Milan in 313, gave freedom of worship for Christians, pledging himself to give stability to the new religion. He built several churches, gave the civil power of Rome to Pope Sylvester I and founded in the eastern part the new capital, Constantinople.
Christianity became the official religion of the empire, thanks to an edict issued in 380 by Theodosius, who was the last emperor of a unified empire: after his death, in fact, his sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the empire in a western and an eastern part. The capital of the western Roman Empire became Ravenna.
Rome, which had lost its central role in the administration of the empire, was sacked in 410 by the Visigoths led by Alaric I,but also embellished by the construction of sacred buildings by the popes (with the collaboration of the emperors). The city, impoverished and depopulated, suffered a new looting in 455, by Genseric, king of the Vandals. The weak emperors of the fifth century could not stop the decay, until the deposition of Romulus Augustus on 22 August 476 marked the end of the Western Roman Empire and, for many historians, the beginning of the Middle Ages.