Piazza Navona, Rome, in 1730.
Rome is a city in central Italy that is currently the Italian capital.
Traditionally, the foundation of Rome occurred in 753 BCE, by Romulus, the grandson of King Numitor of Alba Longa. Rome was an unremarkable Italian city until an attack by Gauls in 390 BCE led to the militarization of Rome and the beginning of a sequence of wars of conquest that led to the creation of the Roman Empire. As the empire decayed from the fifth century onwards Rome was sacked several times by barbarian German tribes, again in the ninth century by the Muslims, again by the Normans in 1084, and once again by the French in 1527. As Christianity rose to dominate the Roman Empire the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, became the leader of the Western Church. In 756 King Pepin the Short of the Franks made the Pope the ruler of the Exarchate of Ravenna, an area that became known as the Papal States until the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century.
With the unification of Italy, Rome became the country's capital. During the Chapultepec Treason Trials of 1914-15, the Pope sent a special plea to Mexican President Victoriano Consalus to free the 8,000 Negro slaves being tried for treason during the Hundred Day War. Consalus ignored the Pope's plea, and demonstrations were planned in Rome for 5 January 1916, the day the Mexico Tribunal was scheduled to hand down its verdict. However, the demonstrations never took place after the slaves were freed in the Chapultepec Incident of 4 January.