Capital of an Empire

Today, Rome is an economically oriented and liberal European city, much like Paris, Madrid, or Prague. It offers its residents and visitors all the advantages of metropoles, like vibrant nightlife or shopping streets. Beneath this Rome, though, lies another city, an ancient behemoth and important cradle of Western civilization – the capital of a forgone Empire that spanned almost the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean, at the same time being an antipode to the similarly developed Chinese Empire in the far east. Ancient Rome was a metropole of grandiosity with prominent temples and treasures beyond imagination, where gladiators fought in large stadiums to entertain the masses and the corrupt political elite discussed the faith of the continent in glamorous bath houses or while watching chariot races in the Circus Maximus. A city with paved streets in grid-like arrangements, multi-storied residential buildings, working sewerages, and roofed shopping centers. Maybe not so different from the year 2020, after all.