Rome

The magnificent eternal city of Rome shines with history and style. Rome is a glamorous city filled with beautiful landmarks. If you’ve never been there you’re missing out on an incredible vacation.

With historic landmarks like the Vatican and Coliseum there’s plenty to see and do. Despite being a busy, chaotic labyrinth of ancient and new streets, central Rome is actually quite easy to navigate. With many world class clubs and restaurants Rome really is the complete vacation city.
 

Rome's early history is caked with legend. Rea Silvia, a vestal virgin and daughter of a local king, Numitor, had twin sons - the product, she alleged, of a rape by Mars. They were supposed to be sacrificed to the god but the ritual wasn't carried out, and the two boys were abandoned and found by a wolf, who nursed them until their adoption by a shepherd, who named them Romulus and Remus. As they grew into manhood, under the protection of the gods, they became leaders in the small community, and later laid out the boundaries of the city on the Palatine Hill. However, it soon became apparent that there was only room for one ruler, and, unable to agree on the signs given to them by the gods, they quarreled, Romulus killing Remus and becoming in 753 BC the city's first monarch, to be followed by six further kings.

Whatever the truth of this story, there's no doubt that Rome was an obvious spot to build a city: the Palatine and Capitoline hills provided security, and there was, of course, the river Tiber, which could easily be crossed here by way of the Isola Tiberina, making this a key location on the trade routes between Etruria and Campania. Rome as a kingdom lasted until about 507 BC, when the people rose up against the tyrannical King Tarquinius and established a Republic, appointing the first two consuls and instituting a more democratic form of government. The city prospered under the Republic, growing greatly in size and subduing the various tribes of the surrounding areas - the Etruscans to the north, the Sabines to the east, the Samnites to the south. By the time it had fought and won the third Punic War against its principal rival, Carthage, in 146 BC, it had become the dominant power in the Mediterranean.

The history of the Republic was, however, also one of internal strife, marked by factional fighting among the patrician ruling classes, as everyone tried to grab a slice of the riches that were pouring into the city from its plundering expeditions abroad - and the ordinary people, or plebeians, enjoying little more justice than they had under the Roman monarchs. This all came to a head in 44 BC, when Julius Caesar, having proclaimed himself dictator, was murdered on 15 March, by conspirators concerned at the growing concentration of power into one man's hands. A brief period of turmoil ensued, giving way, in 27 BC, to the founding of the Empire under Augustus - a triumph for the new democrats over the old guard. Augustus heaved Rome into the Imperial era: he was determined to turn the city - as he claimed - from one of stone to one of marble, building arches, theatres and monuments of a magnificence suited to the capital of an expanding empire. Under Augustus, and his successors, the city swelled to a population of a million or more, its people housed in cramped apartment blocks or insulae; crime in the city was rife, and the traffic problem apparently on a par with today's, leading one contemporary writer to complain that the din on the streets made it impossible to get a good night's sleep. But it was a time of peace and prosperity, the Roman upper classes living a life of indolent luxury, in sumptuous residences with proper plumbing and central heating, and the empire's borders being ever more extended, into other parts of Europe and the Middle East, reaching their maximum limits under the Emperor Trajan, who died in 117 AD. This period constitutes the heyday of the Roman Empire, a time which Gibbon called "the happiest times in the history of humanity".