Ubi's site about Rome, the Eternal City

The history of (classic) Rome is divided in three periods:

monarchy: from the foundation (753 B.C.) to the expulsion of the Etruscan king Tarquinio il Superbo ("Tarquinius the arrogant", 509 B.C.)
republic, till the foundation of the empire by Augustus (30 A.C.)
empire, to the end of the Western Roman Empire (476 A.C.)

During the medieval times, the city population drastically reduced its number; in spite of the immense spiritual and political power of the church, the conditions of the whole peninsula were poor and, in particular, the Roman area was only partially drained; the streets that were laid in the classic ages suffered from poor maintainance. Inevitably, the cultural landscape reflected the economic depression.

Since the Risorgimento (the period in which the modern Italian nation formed) things changed rapidly; important and complex transformations were the outcome of the relationship -positive and conflictual at the same time- between the church and the Italian institutions but important structures from the seventeenth century remaind to testify one of the most glorious moments of the clerical power.
Popes reigned over the Eternal City up to 1870. On september 20th, of that year, indeed, the bersaglieri (an elite corp of the Army) entered the city through the Breccia di Porta Pia (Porta pia breach); on october 2nd a plebiscite approved the fusion of Rome and Latium with Italy.

The dramatic moments of Fascism and of the Second World War, and later the "economic boom" of the Sixties, represent the most significant moments in the modern history of Rome.