Gateway Guide to Rome [antikvár]

View of the Tiber with the dome of St Peter's (/.) and the Castel S. Angelo (r.) Romé is unique among the cities of the world in having been the goal of millions of travellers and wanderers for more than two thousand years. In ancient times it was the brilliant cultural centre of a great empire, to which men came on business and trade, for political reasons, or simply to see the sights, from the near east, from Greece, from Spain and N. Africa, from Gaul and Britain. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims from the whole of western Europe fiiled the roads to Romé, the centre of Western Christendom and the seat of the Pope. From the 15th to the 17th century, the Renaissance inspired a vast quantity of building and great artistic activity. Famous architects, painters and sculptors came from all over Italy to study the ancient monuments and to share in designing and embellishing the countless churches, palaces and other buildings, so many of which remain to give us pleasure today. So many masterpieces were created that more and more artists from all over Europe joined the band of pilgrims on their way to the Eternal City, to learn and to seek inspiration from the new as well as the old. Improved communications-first the stagecoach, then the railways, and now cars and aeroplanes-paved the way for modern tourism, enabling anyone to achieve in 2-3 weeksa round trip to Romé which would have taken our forefathers months, if not years. SOMÉ GEOGRAPHY Romé is the capital of Italy and has a population of 1,649,684. It stands astride the R. Tiber (il Tévere) on longtitude 12° 30' E. and latitude c. 42° N. Surrounding it is the Campagna di Roma stretching westwards towards the Mediterranean, 17 miles away, eastwards to the Sabine Hills and southwards to the Albán Hills. The subsoil consists largely of volcanic ash and tufa from the tertiary period when the surrounding peaks were still active volcanoes. The plain was used for grazing cattle and mountain sheep until the ancient Romans with the help of artificial irrigation transformed it into fertile agricultural land, so that they could always have at least a part of the city's food supply immediately outside the city gates. In the Middle Ages the great