Qualla: Rome https://qualla.com/rome en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/cadaver-synod-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Rome https://qualla.com/rome Rome: Introduction https://qualla.com/rome/ Photo credit J. Miers - User: (WT-shared) Jtesla16 at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. The Roman Forum started as a swamp. In the 7th century BC, engineers drained the marshy valley between Rome's hills by constructing the Cloaca Maxima - a sewer so well-built it still functions today. Where stagnant water once bred disease, they laid paving stones and built temples, and the political heart of the Roman Republic began to beat. Here senators debated, generals celebrated triumphs, merchants traded, and citizens gathered to hear orators who shaped the language lawyers still use. The Forum expanded for eight centuries, monument piling on monument, until the Empire fell and the stones were quarried for medieval buildings. What remains is archaeological stratigraphy - layers of civilization stacked atop each other, each generation building on ruins it no longer understood. This is Rome's fundamental condition: a city of 2.8 million people living on top of two millennia of their ancestors' ambitions.

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Image: J. Miers - User: (WT-shared) Jtesla16 at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/rome-wk/sr2y-rome-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Rome: The Arena of Blood https://qualla.com/rome/ Photo credit Joseph-Noël Sylvestre, Public domain. The Colosseum rose from conquest. Construction began under Emperor Vespasian in 72 AD, paid for with plunder from his son Titus's sack of Jerusalem two years earlier, built by enslaved Jewish prisoners of that war. The elliptical amphitheatre - 189 by 156 meters, four stories of ...

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]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/rome-wk/sr2y-rome-the-arena-of-blood.mp3 0:06 2 full Rome: The Forum's Echoes https://qualla.com/rome/ Photo credit Jebulon, CC0. The Roman Forum today is a confusion of broken columns and partial walls that requires imagination to populate. This was once the center of the known world - the Senate met here, the treasury was kept here, triumphal processions ended here, Julius Caesar was cremated here. The Vi...

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]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/rome-wk/sr2y-rome-the-forums-echoes.mp3 0:06 3 full Rome: The Vatican State https://qualla.com/rome/ Photo credit CC BY 2.5. The Vatican is the world's smallest independent nation - 49 hectares, population around 800 - entirely surrounded by Rome but constitutionally separate since the 1929 Lateran Treaty. The Pope rules as absolute monarch over territory that includes St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine...

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]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/rome-wk/sr2y-rome-the-vatican-state.mp3 0:06 4 full Rome: The City of Churches https://qualla.com/rome/ Photo credit Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rome has over 900 churches - more than any other city in the world. Some date to the 4th century, when Constantine legalized Christianity and believers could finally build openly. Some are baroque extravaganzas dripping with gold. Some are small neighborhood parishes where the sa...

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]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/rome-wk/sr2y-rome-the-city-of-churches.mp3 0:06 5 full Rome: The Living Layers https://qualla.com/rome/ Photo credit Jebulon, CC0. Every construction project in Rome encounters archaeology. The new metro station at the Colosseum, opened in December 2025 after years of delays, displays artifacts found during excavation - the digging revealed remains that couldn't simply be removed. This is routine. Builders b...

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]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/r/2/y/rome-wk/sr2y-rome-the-living-layers.mp3 0:06 6 full