Demographics

Demographics
St. Peter's Basilica from the River Tiber. The iconic dome dominates the skyline of Rome

At the time of the Emperor Augustus, Rome was the largest city in the world, which may have inspired John Heywood's famous epigram, "Rome wasn't built in a day".[citation needed] Estimates of its peak population range from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people, with 1 to 2 million being most popular with historians.[citation needed] Estimates have been made using the weight and consumption of imported grain and the free dole to 20% of the population. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, this suggests an 800,000 – 1.999 million inhabitants based on various per capita consumption figures.[citation needed] The figure 9 million modii of grain (400 million pounds) in storage in the time of emperor Septimius Severus is taken from the late 4th century Historia Augusta. The city population may have been as high as 600,000 until the loss of the richest North African Provinces in the 430s, 440s, and 450s.[citation needed] Thereafter, the population fell rapidly without grain imports (except for some from Sicily and Sardinia) and the unwillingness of the upper classes to support the continued cost to them after the loss of many of their own estates outside Italy.[citation needed] Moreover, it was not worth the effort to maintain an artificially large population. However, every effort was made to keep the area of the Palatine and Forum intact as well as the largest Baths and some other amenities for a smaller population of 90–150,000.[citation needed] After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city's population fell dramatically to less than 50,000 people, and continued to either stagnate or shrink until the Renaissance.[citation needed] When the Kingdom of Italy annexed Rome in 1870, the city had a population of about 200,000, which rapidly increased to 600,000 by the eve of World War I. The Fascist regime of Mussolini tried to block an excessive demographic rise of the city, but failed to prevent it from reaching one million people by 1931.[citation needed] After the Second World War, growth continued, helped by a post-war economic boom. A construction boom also created a large number of suburbs during the 1950s and 1960s.

Almost the entire population of Rome speaks Romanesco (mostly a dialect of Italian language) in the daily life and in informal situations, but allegedly everyone can also speak Standard Italian which is therefore used in more formal situations.






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