Four places, four very different centuries: the Gesù and its Counter-Reformation story, the Spanish Steps, the Grand Tour, the Jewish Ghetto with the horror of October 1943, and Palazzo Chigi, seat of Italy's postwar governments.
Last updated August 23, 2026
In a nutshell: this chapter ranges from the 1500s to the present day: the Chiesa del Gesù, where Ignatius Loyola set up the Jesuit order as the Counter-Reformation began; Piazza di Spagna, a favourite haunt of Grand Tour travellers in the 1700s; the Jewish Ghetto, site of the Nazi roundup of 16 October 1943; and Palazzo Chigi, home of Italy's prime minister since 1961. Start from the history overview; the previous chapter, Christian Rome, ends with the trauma of 1527, and Modern Rome picks up with the unification of Italy.
The little rooms tucked beside the Gesù are where the Spanish-born saint Ignatius Loyola lived out his final dozen years. Loyola established the Jesuit order in 1540, and just afterwards Rome's Catholic leadership opened the Counter-Reformation - an enraged answer to the Protestant revolt.
It was an age of official intolerance and persecution: Galileo stood trial for heresy; Giordano Bruno met his death at the stake on the Campo de' Fiori. Yet the same decades produced astonishing art and architecture, as baroque masters - Caravaggio, Bernini and Borromini among them - set about remaking the city's face.
The Spanish Steps have ranked among Rome's favourite sights for centuries, and so has the square they cascade into. As early as the late 1700s the steps were pulling in crowds of foreigners doing the Grand Tour - the 18th century's answer to the gap year, seen as an essential part of a gentleman's education for affluent young men, in practice almost always men, hailing from Britain and the rest of northern Europe.
Rome at the time was poor but radiant after the building spree of the 1600s, and it welcomed the visitors gladly. So numerous were the arrivals - Byron, Keats, Shelley and Goethe among the poets - that the locals nicknamed the district around the Spanish Steps 'er ghetto de l'inglesi' - literally, the English Ghetto.
For Rome's Jewish community, 16 October 1943 carries profound significance. That Saturday, German troops burst into the Ghetto and seized more than a thousand people. Within days 1022 of them were sent to Auschwitz, and only 16 came home.
It counts as one of two infamous chapters of Germany's occupation of Rome, which lasted between 9 September 1943 and 4 June 1944. 24March 1944 saw the second atrocity: 335 Romans were executed in the Fosse Ardeatine caves, a network of tunnels off the Via Appia Antica, in retaliation for an attack by partisans.
Often called Italy's White House, Palazzo Chigi is an imposing 16th-century palace standing a step away from Via del Corso. Since 1961 the palace has hosted Italy's government and served as the prime minister's official residence - the head of government, the Presidente del Consiglio.
The politics of modern Italy have been a wild ride, with economic growth and controversy and, now and then, outright violence. One of the grimmest chapters came in 1978, during the worst of Italy's anni di piombo, the years of lead, when political terrorism convulsed the country. In that climate, Aldo Moro, a former prime minister, was kidnapped in Monte Mario, in the city's north, and murdered by the Red Brigades, the far-left terror group.