How Rome Became a Megalopolis - 3D Timelapse

Watch Rome grow from a few huts on the Palatine Hill in 753 BC to a city of 2.75 million in 2026: 2,778 years of the history of Rome in one 3D timelapse, built on the city's real street map. From ancient Rome and the Roman Empire to the popes, the Baroque and the Second World War, the city rises, burns, shrinks and grows again. The year and population counters run the whole way, and the landmarks appear at their real positions in the year they were built. The great monuments (the Colosseum, the Temple of Venus and Roma, the palaces on the Palatine, the Pantheon, Castel Sant'Angelo, St Peter's and the Vittoriano) are modelled in detail from their mapped outlines and published measurements, and they rise, weather and fall in their real years. Ten battles are shown up close, where they happened: the Gauls at the Capitol (390 BC), the Visigoths at the Porta Salaria (410), the Gothic siege towers halted when Belisarius's archers shot the oxen pulling them (537), the Arab raiders who came up the Tiber to St Peter's (846), Robert Guiscard's Normans (1084), the Swiss Guard's last stand (1527), the breach of Porta Pia (1870), the bom*bing of San Lorenzo and the fight at Porta San Paolo (1943), and the liberation (1944). CHAPTERS 0:00 Rome today, back to its founding in 753 BC 0:45 509 BC · The Republic 2:10 27 BC · The Empire 3:18 AD 271 · The Aurelian Walls 3:44 AD 410 · Decline and fall 4:39 AD 800 · Medieval Rome 5:40 1377 · The popes return 6:16 1590 · Baroque Rome 7:01 1870 · Rome joins Italy 7:40 1932 · Fascism and war 8:31 1960 · The modern city 9:26 2026 · Rome today FACTS Rome is estimated to have reached about one million people by the 2nd century AD, a size no European city matched again until London around 1800. After the Goths cut the aqueducts in AD 537, the hills emptied and the city shrank into the bend of the Tiber. While the popes were in Avignon (1309–1377), Rome shrank to about 20,000 people. The Aurelian Walls (AD 271–275) ran for 19 km, and much of the circuit still stands. Hadrian's Pantheon, finished around AD 125, is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. St Peter's dome, completed in 1590 to Michelangelo's design, rises 136 m. During the Sack of Rome on 6 May 1527, 147 of the 189 Swiss Guards died covering the pope's escape to Castel Sant'Angelo. Rome became the capital of Italy after Italian troops breached the walls at Porta Pia on 20 September 1870. SOURCES Street network: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via the city-roads cache by Andrei Kashcha Historic-centre building footprints: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via the URBAN GEO BIG DATA project (Politecnico di Milano); building heights from the Copernicus Urban Atlas Building Height 2012 Ancient sites: Pleiades gazetteer (CC BY), Ancient World Mapping Center geodata (ODbL) Population: census of Italy 1871–2021 (ISTAT, via Wikipedia "Demographics of Rome"); ancient and medieval figures are estimates (≈) Outside the historic centre, buildings are reconstructed to fit the real street blocks; monuments are placed at their real positions. MUSIC Original score created for this video. #Rome #3DTimelapse #AncientRome This Rome timelapse is part of a 3D city timelapse series. Next up: London. Which city should I build next?