Rome
Italy's capital, the Eternal City of antiquity
Rome layers nearly three thousand years of history within a single sprawling city. The Colosseum and the ruined Forum sit a few streets from baroque fountains and the dome of St. Peter's across the river in Vatican City. Cobblestone lanes open suddenly onto piazzas alive with cafés and church facades, and ancient aqueducts still march across the surrounding plain. Capital of Italy and seat of the Catholic Church, the Eternal City holds some 4.3 million people in its metropolitan area, living atop the bones of an empire.
Rome rises on its famous seven hills beside a bend of the Tiber River, on a plain in the Lazio region a short distance inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea. The city center sits at a modest 37 metres above sea level, with the hills — the Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine and others — giving it gentle relief. A warm Mediterranean climate brings hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. Within the city walls lies the world's only sovereign enclave, Vatican City, the smallest country on Earth.
Tradition dates Rome's founding to 753 BCE, and from this hill town grew the Roman Republic and then the empire that ruled the Mediterranean world. After the fall of the West, Rome became the spiritual capital of Christendom, remade across the Renaissance and Baroque by popes who summoned Michelangelo and Bernini. It became capital of a unified Italy in 1871. Today Rome is the country's political heart, an open-air museum, and the destination of pilgrims and tourists in their tens of millions.