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Ok, so after my awesome trip to the Eternal City last week, this will be the first in a series of Rome-related threads I'm thinking about. Towards the end of the week, Italians of East Africa will probably get updated as well :cool:


The basic gist of this is: What might we expect the city of Rome to look like, absent the final collapse of the Roman Empire in the west?

Whether the POD is no Vandal Sack, no Sack of Alaric or even as late as no Gothic War is up to you - provided that Roman elites (and not Goths, Vandals or whatever Odoacer's people were) are in charge after the late 5th - early 6th century.

A few observations I would make - even in the dying days of the Empire, the Romans found the necessary means to repair the Colosseum following damage sustained during Alaric's brief vacation in Rome. In 523 AD, after the Roman state in the west had lost everything outside Italy, was ravaged by decades of plague, raids and warfare and was dominated by Theoderic and his Ostrogoths, Anicius Maximus saw fit to celebrate his consulship sine collega by organizing lavish hunts, to the extent that Theoderic was appaled by their cost and prohibited further such enterprizes (apparently he also used the building as a source of materials not long after that). Thus, I think it's fair to assume Roman elites would do everything in their power to keep the Flavian Amphitheater going, whether out of a sense of duty and pride, or as a means of ensuring their legitimacy.

Likewise, absent the destruction of the aqueducts, the Palatine Hill won't have to be virtually abandoned, even more so if the Imperial Palace is not destroyed.

Keeping the agricultural estates in central Italy around should IMO also help Rome keep its population of ~1/4 million properly fed.

Thus, how might the e.g. the Forum and Rome's center evolve over the years, given that they're not destroyed, but are instead the heart of a state controlling at least Italy, and maybe at times Carthage, Provence or eastern Spain?
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