Rome and the Vatican [antikvár]

Introduction Romé has been defined as the Eternal City, dubbed as the Urbe, the caput mundi: such names sum up perfectly the age-old and everlasting impoitance of this city. the cradle of western civilization, the nucleus of the political life of the then-known wodd and, for centuries, the centre of Christianity. Its foundation on the banks of the Tiber is attributed to Romulus (23 April, 753 B.C., the so-called date-of-birth of Romé), who was alsó, as legend has it, the first of the seven kings. The expansion of the city towards its neighbouring regions got underway during the monarchic period. With the expulsion of the last monarch, Tarquinius Superbus, the Republican age began (509). In this period its political organization took shape, laws were codified and the bases laid for the future administrative structure of the state. First under Caesar and then under Augustus, the foundations of the Empire were laid, which led to a fundamental revision of Rome's political and administrative organization. The Román Empire, which was to last until 476 A.D., became, under its various rulers, a vast enticy: it included all the countries of the Mediterranean, taking in ancient Mesopotamia to the east and pushing up to the extreme north of Europe as far as the vallum Hadriani (Britain) which constituted its outerrnost boundary. Romé has left indelible marks of its civilizálton everywhere, in the form of monuments, impressive works of civil engineering. The influence of Rome's legal system is felt eveiywhere, providing the foundation of those laws which were to become an integrál part of modern western states. Latin, the language of the Eternal City, spread everywhere and as it met and blended with local dialects, came to constitute the common root of the various European languages. The universal character of Romé was destined to continue and indeed to become even stronger as a result of the establishment of the Church when Romé became the Holy City. Even in the period considered to be the darkest in humán history, that is in the Middle Ages, when the Empire had been divided into the Western Román and the Eastern Román Empire, and even later when the political strength of Romé had declined and Italy was overrun with peoples from beyond the Alps, the city continued to be the conceptual hub of the Catholic world. The presence of the Papacy gave the Eternal City a predominant role: the Popes were both spiritual and political leaders: the central role played by the Church gave Romé a supremacy unequalled throughout the world. All this led, in each subsequent epoch, to the growth and embellishment of the city and explains the erection of the manifold splendid monuments - churches and palaces - which. in conjunction with the vestiges of the classical period, turnéd the Eternal City, especially in the Renaissance and Baroque period, into one of the most dazzling artistic showcases ever created. It was, in fact, thanks to the Papacy that in the Renaissance age the city was the object of an energetic activity at the cultural and artistic level unmatched since ancient times. Such splendour found its greatest expression in the building of the new Basilica of St. Peter's and the Vatican Palaces complex with their unrivalled masterpieces by Bramante. Raphael and Michelangelo which represent the greatest artistic expression of all time. During the Counter-Reformation (second half of the lőth centuiy) there was a momentary lull in the building of great monuments, but the seventeenth century saw a return to the expression of the wealth and patronage of the Church and of the opulent Román society: