The history of Rome spans 2,800 years of the existence of a city that grew from a small Italian village in the 9th century BC into the centre of a vast civilization that dominated the Mediterranean region for centuries. It is one of the oldest named cities in the world. Its political power was eventually replaced by that of peoples of mostly Germanic origin, marking the beginning of the Middle Ages. Rome became the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and the home of a sovereign state, the Vatican City, within its walls. Today it is the capital of Italy, an international worldwide political and cultural centre, a major global city, and is regarded as one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient world.
The traditional date for the founding of Rome, based on a mythological account, is 21 April 753 BC, and the city and surrounding region of Latium has continued to be inhabited with little interruption since around that time.
Read more about History Of Rome: Ancient Rome, Medieval Rome, Pilgrimage, Roman Commune, 14th and 15th Centuries, Renaissance Rome, Sack of Rome and Counter-Reformation, Italian Unification, Late Modern and Contemporary
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“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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“What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?—Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)