According to aristmarketing, the old town of Rome and the sites of the Vatican with their numerous historical buildings document the importance of the city as the center of the Roman Empire and capital of Roman Catholic Christianity. The outstanding sites include the Augustus Mausoleum, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trajan Column as well as the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano, the Palazzo della Cancellaria and the Basilica of San Paulo Fuori le Mura.

Rome: facts

Rome: history

Splendor and decline – only change is eternal

“I am happy, Rome, to look at your ruins: for the former glory still shines out of the decay.” Buildings abused as quarries are a great attraction for many – not only for the poet Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II. Go on like this for three hundred years: nowhere will there be a trace of earlier splendor. ”

That was too pessimistic an assessment. The shine seems constant and resistant to – often stopped at the last moment – wrongdoers and finally to be able to assert itself against environmental and planning sins. Not only because the Renaissance and Baroque covered the city with new layers of beauty, recreating it, as it were, in the spirit of their epochs. The ancient city of the building-mad emperors within the kilometer-long Aurelian Wall, which was once supposed to offer protection against Germanic barbarians, has long since been respected more highly than it was obviously in the time of Pius II.

“Eternal City” – this designation is like the seal of quality for a guarantee of existence to Romans of different times. It makes them insensitive to the perception that there are now bigger and more important places than their often so apostrophized capital of the world. Your “caput mundi” remains Rome. Those who live next to the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Pantheon may lean towards the traditional view that Rome is »the city«, »urbs«. But here, too, there is only change forever.

The changes that the religious and political center of the ancient metropolis has undergone are particularly massive. Even rulers like Caesar and Augustus put the stamp of their ambition on the Roman Forum with postponements and expansions. At least the famous architectural balance was preserved until Emperor Domitian erected a monumental equestrian statue in the piazza of the forum. Decay, neglect and finally vandalism for a long time up to the first scientific excavations at the end of the 18th century had their fatal effect. But the remains to the left and right of the central Via sacra are enough to help countless Latin students to the surprise that their dead language, which is so painful to learn, has a lively, colorful background.

For years, the impressive work of art around which Michelangelo designed the Capitol Square had disappeared and its base was empty. The bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius had to be painstakingly restored. Since 1997, the Kaiser has been showing again with an outstretched right hand where to go – but only as a true copy. To be on the safe side, the ancient original has finally come to rest in the museum next door. There is also the sculpture of the Capitoline Wolf, which Romulus and Remus, the two legendary city founders, suckle.

The emperor Augustus, who ruled the turn of the century, happily created prosperity and prosperity for Rome. The city showed itself with an altar of peace – Ara pacis Augustae – and after his death with a large, round, Etruscan-looking mausoleum. Usually, the great deeds of the rulers were honored with detailed picture stories on stone pillars, such as those for Trajan or Marcus Aurelius, and on triumphal arches such as for Septimius Severus and Constantine.

After Constantine had legalized Christianity, the way was free to honor St. Paul with a representative basilica. Namely “outside the walls” at the place where the apostle is said to have been buried in 67 AD. The early Christian basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura underwent many changes and had to be almost completely reconstructed after a fire in the 19th century. On December 6, 2006, Vatican archaeologists announced that they had discovered the tomb of the Apostle Paul. The ancient Roman sarcophagus was found under the epigrapher Paulo Apostolo Mart (‘the apostle and martyr Paul’) at the base of the main altar of the basilica. The remains of bones discovered there were dated to the first to second centuries by radiocarbon dating in 2009.