🇮🇹 Italy
Rome
Rome (Roma — "the Eternal City") is the most historically layered city on earth: a 2,800-year urban layer cake where a Republican-era Forum, a Baroque piazza, a medieval basilica and a Fascist-era palazzo can all be visible from the same street corner. Rome was the largest city in the ancient world (1 million residents at its height under the emperor Trajan, 117 AD — not matched by another city in the Western world until London in the 19th century), the seat of the Catholic Church since the 4th century, and the capital of unified Italy since 1871. The three great sites that should anchor any visit: the Colosseum (the Flavian Amphitheatre, 70–80 AD — 50,000 spectators, 400 years of gladiatorial combat, the most visited ancient monument in the world), the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill (the heart of the Republican and Imperial city — where Caesar was killed, where the Senate debated and where the emperors built their palaces), and the Vatican Museums + Sistine Chapel (the greatest collection of art in a single institution in the world — Raphael, Caravaggio, Michelangelo's ceiling). Rome's food is the most distinct of any Italian city: cacio e pepe (pasta with pecorino and black pepper, no cream), carbonara (eggs, guanciale, pecorino, black pepper — never cream), supplì (fried rice balls), and the Roman pizzas al taglio (rectangular, by weight, baked in trays).