traveldk.com

In AD 64 fire destroyed much of Rome. Emperor Nero rebuilt many public works, but also appropriated vast tracts of land to build his Golden House. Hounded from office, he committed suicide in AD 68 (see Nero’s Golden House).

Powerful 1946 drama about the Roman Resistance during World War II. Roberto Rossellini tried to create a documentary feel, filming in the streets mere months after the war ended, using real soldiers and recreating actual events. A young Fellini helped write the script.

The foundation of Rome is said to have occurred in 753 BC. Twins Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars and a Vestal Virgin, were set adrift by their evil uncle and suckled by a she-wolf. They then founded rival Bronze Age villages on the Palatine, but Romulus killed Remus during an argument, and his “Rome” went on to greatness.

The last of the emperors (475–6), deposed by the German warrior Odoacer.

Rome was conquered for the first time in more than a millennium in 1527. Emperor Charles V’s Germanic troops held the city for seven months until Pope Clement VII surrendered and promised to address concerns of the new Protestant movement.

Borromini’s masterpiece appears about as radically freeform as architecture could be in the 17th century. His response to this small space was to fill it with fluid undulations, which have complex geometrical relationships. Borromini succeeded in blurring the line between architecture and sculpture, resulting in a homogeneous interior topped by an oval dome.

Architectural layers of this church unravel Rome’s history, from the 2nd century BC to the 15th century AD.

Though altered during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the church was built just 12 years after St Francis stayed at this hospice in 1219. Ask the sacristan’s permission to visit the cell in which St Francis stayed, bearing a copy of his portrait by Margaritone d’Arezzo. The last chapel on the left houses Bernini’s Beata Ludovica Albertoni (1671- 4), in a state of religious ecstasy bordering scandalously on the sexual.

Besides its grandiose Baroque bulk, visible from all over Rome, this former papal complex boasts the world’s very first baptistry, its octagonal shape the model for all those to come. A building on the piazza houses the Scala Santa, claimed to be the staircase from Pontius Pilate’s house that Jesus ascended to face his trial - devout believers climb the 28 steps on their knees. Tradition says that the stairs were brought from Jerusalem by St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine (see San Giovanni in Laterano).