Italy

Who ruled Rome?

Rome dates from about 753 BCE. On our historical maps, the ground it stands on has been drawn inside 14 different states, empires and peoples. Read the history of Italy.

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The history of Rome

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Rome grew up on a group of hills beside the Tiber, about 25 kilometres from the sea, at the lowest point where the river could easily be crossed and close to an island that made bridging it simpler. The crossing linked the Etruscan cities to the north with the Latin and Greek lands to the south, and the hills offered defence and a dry place to live above marshy valleys. From this site Rome built an empire that ruled the whole Mediterranean, and after that empire fell it became the centre of the Catholic Church. Those two roles, imperial capital and papal city, define its history.

Kings, republic and empire

Huts stood on the Palatine Hill by around 1000 BCE, and later Romans dated their city's founding by Romulus to 753 BCE. Under kings, some of them Etruscan, the villages merged into a city; the drainage of the valley that became the Forum and the building of the first temples date from this time. Tradition holds that the last king was expelled in 509 BCE and the Roman Republic founded. Gallic warriors sacked the city around 390 BCE, after which a stone wall was built, but over the next three centuries Rome conquered Italy, defeated Carthage in the Punic Wars and took over the Greek east.

Civil wars ended the republic, and after Augustus became the first emperor in 27 BCE, Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire and probably the largest city in the world, with perhaps a million inhabitants fed by grain shipped from Egypt and North Africa. After the great fire of 64 CE emperors added the Colosseum, opened in 80 CE, vast baths and new forums. In the 270s, as invasions threatened, Aurelian surrounded the city with new walls.

Decline and the papal city

Rome lost political weight as emperors ruled from frontier capitals, and Constantine I, who favoured Christianity and built the first basilica of St Peter, founded Constantinople as a new capital in 330. The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and the Vandals in 455, and in 476 the last western emperor was deposed in Ravenna. The Gothic wars of the sixth century, in which the Byzantine Empire recovered the city from the Ostrogoths, left it ruined, and its population fell to a few tens of thousands.

The bishops of Rome, the popes, filled the vacuum. In 754 they allied with the Frankish kings, and on Christmas Day 800 Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor in St Peter's. Rome became the capital of the Papal States, a territory across central Italy, though popes often struggled with Roman noble families, the city commune and German emperors. When the papacy moved to Avignon from 1309 to 1377, the city decayed further. After the popes returned, Renaissance and Baroque pontiffs rebuilt it: the new St Peter's Basilica, begun in 1506, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and the squares and fountains of Bernini all date from this era. Imperial troops sacked the city brutally in 1527.

Capital of Italy

The French Revolutionary armies seized Rome in 1798, and a short-lived Roman Republic of 1849 was crushed by French troops, who then protected the pope until 1870. On 20 September 1870, as part of the unification of Italy, Italian forces breached the walls, and Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy in 1871. Benito Mussolini's Fascists seized power after the March on Rome in 1922 and cut broad roads through ancient sites. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 created the independent state of Vatican City within Rome. German forces occupied the city in September 1943 until the Allies entered it on 4 June 1944. Rome today has about 2.8 million inhabitants and is the capital of the Italian Republic, the seat of the papacy and one of the world's great repositories of art and architecture.

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In pictures

1 images · scroll →

Timeline

25 periods

123,000 BCE – 10,000 BCENeanderthalMap of 123,000 BCE →
10,000 BCE – 5000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 10,000 BCE →
5000 BCE – 4000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapunder Cardial Ware cultureMap of 5000 BCE →
4000 BCE – 1500 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 4000 BCE →
1500 BCE – 1000 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 1500 BCE →
1000 BCE – 700 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 1000 BCE →
700 BCE – 500 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 700 BCE →
500 BCE – 400 BCERomeMap of 500 BCE →
400 BCE – 323 BCERoman RepublicMap of 400 BCE →
323 BCE – 300 BCERomeMap of 323 BCE →
300 BCE – 200 BCERoman RepublicMap of 300 BCE →
200 BCE – 100 BCERomeMap of 200 BCE →
100 BCE – 1 BCERoman RepublicMap of 100 BCE →
1 BCE – 300 CERoman EmpireMap of 1 BCE →
300 CE – 400 CERome (Maximian)Map of 300 CE →
400 CE – 500 CEWestern Roman EmpireMap of 400 CE →
500 CE – 600 CEOstrogothsMap of 500 CE →
600 CE – 800 CEEastern Roman EmpireMap of 600 CE →
800 CE – 900 CEPapal StatesMap of 800 CE →
900 CE – 1000 CECarolingian EmpireMap of 900 CE →
1000 CE – 1100 CEHoly Roman EmpireMap of 1000 CE →
1100 CE – 1878 CEPapal StatesMap of 1100 CE →
1878 CE – 1914 CEItalyMap of 1878 CE →
1914 CE – 1920 CEKingdom of Italyunder ItalyMap of 1914 CE →
1920 CE – todayItalyMap of 1920 CE →

Quick answers

Who rules Rome today?: On the latest map, Rome is in Italy.
Who ruled Rome the longest?: On our maps, the Papal States, for about 778 years (1100 CE to 1878 CE).
How many times has Rome changed hands?: Our maps show it passing to a new ruler 8 times since 1 CE.
Who ruled Rome in 1 CE, 1000, 1500 and 1900?: In 1 CE: Roman Empire. In 1000: Holy Roman Empire. In 1500: Papal States. In 1900: Italy.

Dates are the years of our map snapshots, which are decades or centuries apart, so a change shown between two years happened at some point in that gap. The borders come from the historical-basemaps project and are approximate, especially for the ancient world and for peoples without fixed frontiers.

Rome on this site

Born in Rome: Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), Mark Antony (83–30 BCE), Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE), Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) and Boethius (480–525 CE)
Died in Rome: Gaius Marius (157–86 BCE), Vercingetorix (80–46 BCE), Seneca the Younger (4 BCE–65 CE), Paul the Apostle (5–66 CE), Nero (37–68 CE), Galen (200–300 CE), Michelangelo (1475–1564), Raphael (1483–1520), Christina of Sweden (1626–1689) and Pope John Paul II (1920–2005)
Events in Rome: Great Fire of Rome (64 CE), Sack of Rome (410) (410 CE), Sack of Rome (1527) (1527), March on Rome (1922) and Treaty of Rome (1957)
Rome in the guided tours: The Rise and Fall of Rome, The Silk Road, The Silk Road & Indian Ocean Trade, China's Dynastic Cycle, Great Kingdoms of Africa, Empires of India, How the World's Religions Began, The Age of Revolutions, The Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Explorers, The Renaissance: A Rebirth Spreads From Italy, The Reformation: Christendom Divided, Hannibal and the Punic Wars, The Huns and the Great Migrations, World War II in Europe and North Africa, Ancient Egypt: Three Thousand Years on the Nile, Persia: Empires of the Iranian Plateau, Byzantium: The Thousand-Year Empire, Europe on the Move: From the Ice Age to Today, Ancient Greece: From City-States to the Hellenistic World, Europe Through History, The Spanish Empire and Making Italy and Germany

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