Premium Featured Accommodation

Roman Italy

The city of Rome rose up over a settlement of shepherds and farmers living on the Palatine hills between the late 9th and early 7th centuries B.C. Legend and history have set the date at 753 B.C. and, also according to tradition, the first of the seven Kings of Rome was its mythical founder Romulus.

It was in the subsequent Republican period that Rome made its grand entrance on the world stage, thanks to its headlong Mediterranean expansion and to its political/institutional consolidation, which culminated with the taking of Carthage in 201 B.C. and the resulting absolute hegemony over the Mediterranean region (Mare Nostrum).

Julius Cesar continued this expansion over land, giving the Republic "imperial" connotations and borders.
Thus when the actual imperial regime came about with Octavian in 27 B.C., Rome could rightly call itself "Caput Mundi".
At the apex of its strength, approximately two centuries later, its legions had conquered from the Valley of Hadrian near the border with Scotland all the way to Persia and vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa, stretching to the ancient Columns of Hercules near Gibraltar to the west.

Shortly thereafter the Empire began a long period of decline that lasted until 476 A.D., when it was crushed by the Barbarian invasions. Military defeat was the logical consequence of the political, cultural, artistic and demographic decadence of a Rome that had lost its moral greatness - a role that it would rediscover with the Papacy, born with St. Peter but institutionalised perhaps only with Pope Calixtus I (217-222 A.D.).
Nevertheless, Rome's supremacy would never again be of a political/military nature and its protagonists would no longer be the people but the Church - the seat of a new worldwide institution.

Articles