Comment

Comment on Why did/do sites such as the pyramids in Egypt or the Roman colosseum end up in an abandoned state, only to be "rediscovered" later?

klu9@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

In addition to the points others made, Rome has not always been a bustling city.

Its population declined from more than a million in AD 210 to 500,000 in AD 273 to 35,000 after the Gothic War (535–554) reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins, vegetation, vineyards and market gardens.

The city’s population declined to less than 50,000 people in the Early Middle Ages from 700 AD onward. It continued to stagnate or shrink until the Renaissance.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Middle_Ages

Thanks to multiple sackings, power struggles, plagues etc.

It only surpassed a million again in 1936. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Demographics

source

Sort:hotnew top

DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That it took so long to recover is surprising. How did the Vatican not revitalize the city when it grew in power?

source
- klu9@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I don’t know but my speculation:
  
  Europe’s economy (from which the Church’s income was largely derived) didn’t go into overdrive until the Renaissance / Columbus landing in America.
  
  That growth being offset by the Reformation, with a lot of Europeans leaving the Roman Catholic Church.
  
  The somewhat decentralized nature of the Church, with a lot of assets in the hands of monastic orders and semi-autnomous archbishoprics.
  
  Perhaps an absolutist theocratic monarchy is not the most conducive form of government for economic and population growth.
  
  The population started to tick up with the Renaissance, but when Italy essentially unified under a more modern constitutional monarchy in 1861, ending the Pope’s temporal power over the city, Rome’s population growth went stratospheric.
  
  Image
  
  Source: www.jetpunk.com/…/population-of-rome-over-time
  
  source