1. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Like any epic, the city boasts dramatic origins, starting when the king of Alba Longa, Amulius, grew paranoid and defended his claim of the throne by killing his brother’s sons and exiling his daughter, Rhea, who would go on to have a pair of twins through divine intervention.
Amulius viewed the twins, Romulus and Remus, as a threat as well, and so he killed their mother and abandoned the babes in the Tiber river. However, the fates seemed to be on the twins’ side, because a she-wolf saved and raised them before a shepherd later adopted them.
According to the legend, Romulus and Remus would go on to establish the city of Rome on the very river they were left to die in. However, a spat over the city’s borders would lead Romulus to kill Remus, name the city after himself (Rome), and then, ruling alone, Romulus grew Rome’s population by abducting women from the nearby tribe Sabine.
7. Outside of temples for gods and goddesses, one of the most famous architectural wonders in Rome is the Colosseum. According to thecolosseum.org, the Colosseum was originally built by Emperor Vespasian — kind of serving as an apology gift to the people of Rome for all they endured under the previous Emperor, Nero.
Emperor Nero is famed for being a tyrant. He was previously believed to have killed several women close to him, including his mother — who was sometimes his lover — as well as his adoptive step-sister, who was also his wife, and his second wife.
It was even rumored that he burned Rome to the ground so that he’d have an excuse to build himself a new palace. All of this, according to the New Yorker, is being reconsidered by historians as new discoveries show he may have been bad, but not all-out evil.
