Rome is a special Italian joint, the capital of the province of Rome, the Lazio region and capital of the Italian Republic.

It is the most populous municipality and largest in Italy and is among the major European capitals in size of the territory, by definition, is called the Eternal City and Urbe.

During his three thousand years of history, was the first great metropolis of the world, the heart of one of the most important ancient civilizations, which influenced society, culture, language, literature, art, architecture, philosophy, religion, law, customs of the following centuries, was the capital of the Roman Empire, which extended its rule over the whole Mediterranean basin and much of Europe, and the Papal States, subject to the temporal power Popes.

It is the city with the highest concentration of historical and architectural landmarks in the world, and its Old Town surrounded by the perimeter of the Aurelian walls, overlapping testimonies of almost three millennia, is an expression of historical, artistic and cultural heritage of the Western world Committee and, in 1980, together with the Holy See extraterritorial property in the city and the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Rome, the heart of Catholic Christianity, is the only city in the world to accommodate internally a foreign state, the enclave of Vatican City: for this reason it is often called the capital of two states.

Geography

Rome stands on the banks of the river Tiber, the original settlement developed on hills facing the bight in which lies the Tiber Island, the only natural ford of the River.

Territory

The district is large, having incorporated areas abandoned for centuries, for the most part marshy and unsuitable for agriculture and do not belong to any town hall covers an area of 1285.31 km ² and is the largest in Italy and one of the longest among the capitals of Europe. Rome ruled an area that is large in size, roughly, as the sum of the municipalities of Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Bari and Catania, and is superior to that of municipalities like New York, Moscow, Berlin, Madrid and Paris.

The population density is high, the significant presence of green areas around the municipality: Rome is unique in the Western world for the vastness of the countryside that crowns the city and the interpenetration between town and country.

Rome is also the Italian city with the highest number of neighboring municipalities: 29 Italian municipalities over the enclave of Vatican City, for a total of 30 territories.

The land on which the city was founded and developed a complex geological history: the substrate is the recent pyroclastic material produced by volcanoes, now extinct, that surround the area of town south-east, the Latium Volcano in the current Alban Hills, and north-west, Monti Sabatini, between 600,000 and 300,000 years ago. These deposits are formed most of the hilly area. Then the activity of the Tiber river and dell'Aniene contributed to erosion and sedimentation of the findings, characterizing the current territory.

The territory of Rome, therefore, has many natural landscapes and environmental characteristics: some mountains and hills (including historical seven hills), the plains, the Tiber River and its tributaries, the Marranos, the lakes of Bracciano and Martignano and artificial ones, river island (the Tiber Island), the coast's sandy beach of Ostia, the Tyrrhenian Sea.