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A ROMA

Rome ( Capital of Italy) Rome, Italian: Roma pronounced Latin: Rōma) is a city and special comune ("Roma Capitale") in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and also of Lazio (Latin: Latium). With 2.8 million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi), it is also the country's largest and most populated comune and fifth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. Between 3.2 and 3.8 million people live in the Rome urban and metropolitan area.[3][4][5][6][7][8] The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber within the Lazio region of Italy. Rome is referred to as "The Eternal City", a notion expressed by ancient Roman poets and writers.

Rome's history spans more than two and a half thousand years, since its founding in 753 BC. It is one of the oldest cities in Europe. In the ancient world it was successively the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and is regarded as one of the birthplaces of western civilization. Since the 1st century AD, Rome has been considered the seat of the Papacy and in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. In 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic.

Legend of the Founding of Rome

Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth. The most familiar of these myths, and perhaps the most famous of all Roman myths, is the story of Romulus and Remus, the twins who were suckled by a she-wolf. They decided to build a city, but after an argument, Romulus killed his brother. According to the Roman annalists, this happened on 21 April 753 BC.[This legend had to be reconciled with a dual tradition, set earlier in time, that had the Trojan refugee Aeneas escape to Italy and found the line of Romans through his son Iulus, the namesake of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.[This was accomplished by the Roman poet Virgil in the first century BC.

Ethnic groupsAccording to the latest statistics conducted by ISTAT,[62] approximately 9.5% of the population consists of non-Italians. About half of the immigrant population consists of those of various other European origins (chiefly Romanian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Albanian) numbering a combined total of 131,118 or 4.7 percent of the population. The remaining 4.8 percent are those with non-European origins, chiefly Filipinos (26,933), Bangladeshis (12,154), Peruvians (10,530), and Chinese (10,283).

The Esquilino rione, off Termini Railway Station, has evolved into a largely immigrant neighbourhood; it is now seen as Rome's Chinatown, but in fact immigrants from more than a hundred different countries crowd its busy streets and piazzas. A thriving commercial district, Esquilino boasts dozens of restaurants featuring every kind of international cuisine. There are innumerable wholesale clothes shops: of the 1,300 or so commercial premises operating in the district 800 are Chinese-owned, around 300 are run by immigrants from other countries around the world and some 200 are owned by Italians.

Hundreds of Romani gypsies live in illegal trailer camps on the city's outskirts. There is a growing population of homeless people in Rome, mostly not Italian and estimated at 7,000.

The Colosseum & Arch of Constantine

Architecture

Rome's architecture over the centuries has greatly developed, especially from the Classical and Imperial Roman styles to modern Fascist architecture. Rome was for a period one of the world's main epicentres of classical architecture, developing new forms such as the arch, the dome and the vault. The Romanesque style in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries was also widely used in Roman architecture, and later the city became one of the main centres of Renaissance and Baroque architecture.

The Treveni Fountain

The Roman Colosseum

Palazzo Senatorio, Rome: City Hall

Castel Sant’Angelo

Villa Borghese

Internal View of the Colosseum

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