ancient cities

678 Rome, Italy
inhabitants, and the city has greatly expanded
beyond its traditional borders of the old Aurelian
Wall. The modern city is a key transportation node
within Italy and is the center of administration and
government. The University of Rome (known as La
Sapienza), founded in the fourteenth century, is now
Europe’s largest. Tourism has become a major
source of income, and the city ranks among the top
tourist destinations worldwide. The Vatican and its
museums are especially popular sites, and since
1929, it has been firmly established as an autonomous
state within the city. Among the challenges
that the city faces today are overcrowding, preservation
of the city’s innumerable monuments, and preventing
their degradation by pollution and tourism.
Rome has been a continuously occupied, significant
urban center for nearly 3,000 years, and
the city’s history has been characterized by a constant
process of rebuilding and recycling of earlier
structures and models. This long, constant occupation
has resulted in a complex city of overlapping
layers both literal (the central city rests on a layer
of artificial fill that in places is up to 20 meters
deep) and symbolic. In Rome, as exemplified by
current spaces such as the Piazza Navona, which
precisely mirrors the form of the underlying
Roman Circus of Domitian, the presence of the
past is inescapable, and the ancient city continues
to influence and shape the modern one.
Gregory S. Aldrete
See also Capital City, Mediterranean Cities; Piazza;
Renaissance City; Urban Planning
Further Readings
Coulston, J. and H. Dodge, eds. 2000. Ancient Rome:
The Archaeology of the Eternal City. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University School of Archaeology.
Hibbert, Christopher. 1985. Rome: The Biography of a
City. New York: Penguin.
Krautheimer, R. 2000. Rome: Profile of a City,
312–1308. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.