"All road leads to Rome". This line is enough to prove the popularity of Rome. This historical city centre is dominated by the traditional "Seven hills of Rome". It seems there is no possible way that Rome can live up to its reputation. In all the books you’ll read, in all the pictures you’ll see, and in all the pithy sayings you’ll hear, Rome will be presented as an idealized city, an eternal metropolis that seamlessly transitions from history to the present in a matter of city blocks. It will be canonized for its invaluable cultural treasures, from
ancient temples to Imperial palaces. In short, the hype will be so extensive that Rome will seem, in a sense, to be unreal.
Rome, the fabled eternal
city that exerts the most fascination in the mind of the traveler, can reward as no other city can. Lavished with architectural jewelry from republican to imperial to early-Christian to medieval to renaissance to baroque to modern times by history's greatest artists, the queen of cities has also experienced sieges and raids that left their scars; but each time the city recovered from her injuries in glorious form. Rome’s history is tightly connected to the history of Europe as a whole. The Roman emperors and medieval emperors and kings regarded Rome as the true seat of power; only here could their authority, through benediction by the popes, be sanctified.
