Rome

💡 About Rome

Rome, the Eternal City, has been continuously inhabited for over 2,800 years and has served successively as the capital of the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Papal States and now the Italian Republic — no other city on Earth has played such a decisive and prolonged role in shaping the history of Western civilisation. The city sits above a vast and largely unexplored network of underground tunnels, aqueducts, tombs and catacombs estimated to stretch for hundreds of kilometres beneath the modern streets — a subterranean Rome that in many ways rivals the visible one. With over 900 churches within the city limits, Rome has more places of Catholic worship per square kilometre than almost anywhere on Earth; among these are some of the most magnificent buildings ever constructed by human hands, including the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, the oldest and most senior of all Catholic churches, founded by Emperor Constantine in 313 AD.

The Colosseum, completed in 80 AD under Emperor Titus and capable of holding between 50,000 and 80,000 spectators, remains the largest ancient amphitheatre ever built and a masterpiece of Roman engineering — its system of vaults and arches has influenced architects for two millennia. Vatican City, an independent city-state of just 44 hectares entirely enclosed within Rome, is the world's smallest sovereign state, the seat of the Catholic Church, and the repository of one of the greatest art collections in human history, including Michelangelo's incomparable Sistine Chapel ceiling painted between 1508 and 1512. The Trevi Fountain, completed in 1762 and fed by one of Rome's ancient aqueducts dating back to 19 BC, receives an estimated €1 million worth of coins thrown by visitors each year, all of which are collected and donated to a charity providing food for those in need.

Rome's legendary cuisine — pasta cacio e pepe, carbonara, amatriciana, supplì — was developed in the kitchens of its working-class neighbourhoods (rioni) over centuries, using the cheapest available ingredients to create dishes that are now celebrated worldwide. The city's historic centre was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, but the challenge of preserving 2,800 years of layered history beneath a functioning modern capital of nearly three million people is one of the most complex urban management problems anywhere on Earth. Ancient Romans were prodigious engineers: their concrete, a mixture of lime, volcanic ash and seawater, has proven stronger and more durable than modern concrete, and structures like the Pantheon — built in 125 AD — remain perfectly intact today.

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