From the cannons at Porta Pia to the scandals of the modern city hall: the Vittoriano, EUR, the Auditorium and the Capitoline trace the century and a half since Rome became the capital of Italy.
עודכן לאחרונה 23 באוגוסט 2026
In a nutshell: the Vittoriano celebrates Vittorio Emanuele II, first king of a united Italy, and the proclamation of Rome as the nation's capital in 1871; EUR is the most celebrated architectural legacy of Mussolini's regime; the Auditorium brought Renzo Piano's contemporary architecture to the city in 2002; and the Capitoline hill, home of Rome's city hall, was shaken in 2014 by the scandal known as Mafia Capitale. The history overview frames the whole story; the preceding chapters are Christian Rome and Renaissance & Baroque.
At the heart of the Vittoriano stands a colossal equestrian statue of Vittorio Emanuele II, first king of a united Italy. The coronation, though, was not the closing chapter of the unification movement, the Risorgimento; it set the stage for the finale that played out in the autumn of 1870, when Italian troops stormed into Rome through the breach at Porta Pia, wrenching the city away from the man who in practice ruled it, Pope Pius IX. He withdrew into the Vatican. Then, in February 1871, the city was proclaimed Italy's capital.
In the far south of the city stands EUR, the most celebrated architectural legacy of Mussolini. Once the dictator had seized power in 1925, he launched a string of large-scale construction projects across Rome.
The projects ranged from new boulevards such as the Via dei Fori Imperiali boulevard and the Via della Conciliazione to the clearance of the ancient forums and the Largo di Torre Argentina square, and on to the most spectacular of all: the EUR district plus the Foro Italico, a vast sports complex.
Mussolini also set relations between the regime and the Church on a formal footing, with the Lateran Treaty of 1929. The pact made Vatican City a sovereign state and acknowledged that the pope holds full sovereignty.
The early 2000s brought a burst of building activity to Rome. Arriving right after the citywide preparations for the Jubilee of 2000, a run of attention-grabbing new buildings went up across the capital. First came the most futuristic of them all, the Auditorium Parco della Musica, designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 2002; it quickly grew into the hub of Rome's performing-arts scene.
Then, four years on, a pavilion of glass and steel built to shelter the Ara Pacis, the ancient altar, was unveiled - and it sparked fierce argument, as Rome's vocal commentariat debated what contemporary architecture was doing in the historic centre.
The Capitoline has sat at the heart of Roman life since antiquity, and 'Campidoglio' is still shorthand for city hall: the mayor and the municipal council sit in Palazzo Senatorio, above the piazza that crowns the hill. Scandal has never been a stranger to those halls of power, yet even hardened observers were taken aback when the Mafia Capitale affair hit Rome in 2014. At its core was a web of corrupt deals linking city officials to organised crime, and the inquiry, which ran for three years, ended with 41 people sent to prison.