Rome
Overview
Rome does not try to impress you. It has been impressive for three thousand years and feels no need to start now.
This is a city where ancient ruins are just the thing you walk past on the way to the market. The capital holds nearly three million people, layered over Etruscan stone, imperial monuments, Renaissance palaces, and Fascist boulevards, all of it still in daily use. You do not visit Rome's history. You live inside it, buy your bread in it, sit in traffic next to it. The Romans themselves are warm in a wary, funny, unbothered way, a people who have watched every empire come and go and rather expect this one to pass too.
Go deeper
A note on these scores: Rome is many cities in one, and its neighborhoods vary widely. We score Rome as most newcomers would actually live it, in the kind of central, residential areas relocators choose, not by its roughest corners or its grandest addresses. The neighborhood guide below shows the real range.
At a Glance
The terracotta source under each score is a live link. Follow it to see where the number comes from.