The hills and plains of Lazio have been populated since Cro-Magnon times. Its history (especially that of Rome) is explained in far greater detail in many other articles, but here we attempt to give a brief outline of this history, and try to relate the towns and countryside in Lazio with these developments.
In the ninth century BC the Etruscans arrived and with them came the first great civilisation of the region. The Etruscans founded many city-states in the area and developed the farming of the land. The Etruscans were an obscure race and their culture and language (possibly eastern in origin) were very different from most other tribes on the Italian peninsula at that time. The Etruscans knew life to be a temporal stage and their houses reflected that, being basic and built of wood and clay, leaving little remaining today. However, the afterlife had a much higher priority and they believed that building their tombs to last forever and decorating them like houses would extend this afterlife. This gave rise to the fabulous Etruscan necropolis that can be found throughout Lazio (eg. Cerveteri, Tarquinia).As in so many ways, Lazio's history is inextricably linked with its capital Rome and any history of Lazio is dominated by Rome's influence on the surrounding area. Rome itself was founded by the Latin people (tradition has it that the year was 753BC and attributes its foundation to Romulus, and sometimes also his brother Remus). As it developed, the Etruscans felt threatened by this new town in the south of their region and took over its government. It was an Etruscan monarchy, until Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last king, was overthrown by a popular uprising and in 509BC it became a Republic. Over the next several hundred years Rome went to war with its neighbours (including the Etruscans, Sabini and Latins), gradually conquering and absorbing the surrounding areas and by the start of the 3rd Century BC controlled most of the Italian peninsula. Rome's eventual victory in the three Punic Wars against Carthage (264 - 146BC) resulted in the control of huge areas of Europe and North Africa. At this time, the first basilica was built in Rome, the first aqueduct and the Appian Way (connecting Rome to southern Italy).After a brief period of instability, civil wars and further expansion by, among others, Julius Caesar (in the first century BC), Augustus became Emperor and the Roman Empire entered its greatest period, that was to last several hundred years. Britain, central and eastern Europe, the Arab peninsula and more of North Africa). This was also a time of agricultural development of the countryside as well as building work and cultural patronage within Rome itself. Great basilicas, temples and baths, aqueducts, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Imperial Forum, the Arch of Titus, the Columns of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius were all built within two or three hundred years of the start of the millennium - the height of the power of the Roman Empire. By the third century AD Rome was in decline. Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion and Constantinople was founded to form the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire but the Western Roman Empire, and Rome itself, was under threat. During the first 70 years of the 5th Century it was captured by the Visigoths, Huns and then Vandals and eventually fell in 476AD to Odoacer, king of the Heruli, who made himself emperor. There then followed a long period of battles, invasions and occupations by peoples as far a field as the Barbarians, Saracens and Arabic tribes, as well as many closer neighbours, interspersed with only short times of peace. This led to a social and economic decline and a dwindling of the population to a few tens of thousands by the early middle ages (from well over 1 million at the height of the Roman Empire). However, Christianity was the dominant religion and this was a period when some of the great Christian basilicas (The Basilica of St Peter, The Basilica of St. John in Lateran) were built. The region surrounding Rome, including the countryside and villages as well as the larger towns of Frosinone, Rieti and Viterbo, was conquered and controlled by the Romans during Imperial times. The fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent invasions by the Germanic tribes lead to a long period of decline in Lazio as a whole. The area was prone to feudal infighting between the nobility with large, landed estates but this was also a time when the monasteries and abbeys of the region started to reclaim and control the countryside. The fortified hilltop villages, so characteristic of this region, originate from this time, and were primarily built for defence. Every villager would live within the walls, protected from neighbouring warlords and only leaving and venturing down into their farmland each day. Around the 11th Century this decline was slowly reversed. This was due to the influence of the Papacy, and, apart from the Pope's exile to Avignon during the 14th Century, this was the beginning of Rome as the centre of the Papal States and a new period of wealth and power in the region that was to last through to modern times. During the 15th and 16th Centuries, the Pontiff?s civic and spiritual power influenced huge developments economically, culturally and architecturally. By the end of the 15th Century, Rome was more important a site of the Renaissance than Florence. During the 16th Century, the great artists of the time (Michelangelo, Raphael) worked for the Papacy and many great palaces, villas and new major streets were built. Old churches were renovated and work on the new Basilica of St. Peter began. Due to the wealth and power of the church at this time, and Rome's centrality in the Pontific state, Lazio as a whole benefited. The stability in the region and progress in the economy led to a repopulation of the countryside, which continued right up to the 20th Century. Rather than having to live within the confines of a fortified settlement, farms began to be built, scattered over the best land in the region. Despite Napoleon's occupation of Rome (1797 - 1799 and 1809 - 1815) and its inclusion in the Napoleonic empire for these brief periods, Lazio remained a Papal state until after the unification of the rest of Italy under the House of Savoy (1861) until it was forced into the kingdom of Italy in 1870 and Rome became the capital of the new Italy one year later. The Pope's rule of the Papal States finished, he remained in the Vatican and in 1929 the independent Vatican City State was created. Throughout the centuries of rule by the Pontiff, Rome and Lazio had seen much building and redevelopment. Now, as Rome took on its new role of capital of Italy, it underwent further development, construction of new villas and fitting new palaces. It also saw massive population growth and (often chaotic) expansion. However, this growth was at the expense of the Lazio countryside, which experienced depopulation and migration to Rome. The 20th Century saw modernisation and industrialisation. Rome continued to grow and did not suffer great damage during WWII as it was spared heavy bombing. Mussolini had had many old parts of the city destroyed and rebuilt with huge new edifices and developments. After the war, Rome's expansion continued outwards, to cope with the growth in residential needs. With the industrialisation of the lowlands in parts of Latina and Frosinone provinces, and the attraction of Rome, the remaining Lazio countryside continued to see depopulation. Only 25% of the Lazio population live outside Rome, meaning the undeveloped beauty and tranquillity of the countryside provides a stark contrast to the modern day political, religious and economic capital that is Rome. |
