Historic Centre of Rome
The Forum, the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Baroque city. UNESCO listing (opens the UNESCO site) ↗︎
History
The story of Italy
Italy's story is many stories. Etruscans ruled central Italy, and from the eighth century BC Greek colonists built Magna Graecia in the south and Sicily, leaving temples at Paestum and Agrigento finer than many in Greece. Rome, by tradition founded in 753 BC, grew from a hill town into an empire that ruled the whole Mediterranean, which Romans called simply mare nostrum, "our sea".
After the fall of the Western Empire in 476, Italy became a patchwork of cities and states. The maritime republics of Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi grew rich on trade; Norman Sicily blended Latin, Greek and Arab art. In fifteenth-century Florence, under the Medici, the Renaissance began, and Rome's Baroque followed. Italy was united as a kingdom in 1861, with Rome as capital from 1871, and became a republic in 1946.
A short timeline
- Etruscans and Magna Graecia8th to 3rd centuries BC
Etruscan cities in Tuscany; Greek temples in the south and Sicily.
- Rome753 BC to AD 476
Republic, then Empire from Augustus in 27 BC.
- The maritime republics10th to 18th centuries
Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi.
- The Renaissance15th and 16th centuries
Florence, the Medici, then Rome and Venice.
- Baroque17th century
Bernini and Borromini remake Rome.
- Unification1861
The Kingdom of Italy; Rome becomes capital in 1871.
- The Republic1946 to today
A founding member of the European project in 1957.
