753 BC — AD 476
Walk through the streets of Rome, enter the Senate, march with the legions and discover the civilisation whose ideas still echo through law, language, architecture and government.
Ancient Rome began as a settlement beside the River Tiber and grew into an empire spanning Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Its triumphs were immense, its conflicts brutal and its cultural influence enduring.
This experience brings together the defining people, places and ideas of Roman history in a bold, editorial journey.
Rise, rule and transformation
Move from legend to republic, empire and the transformation of the western Roman world.
Rome’s legendary age of kings, from Romulus to the overthrow of Tarquin the Proud.
IConsuls, senators and citizen armies drove Roman expansion across the Mediterranean.
IIAugustus established imperial rule, beginning centuries of power, wealth and monumental building.
IIIReform, division and invasion reshaped the empire before western imperial rule ended.
IVThe Roman world
From imperial palaces to crowded apartment blocks, Rome connected cultures through roads, trade, conquest and law.
Discover every chapter →“The history of Rome is the history of the world.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
People who changed Rome
Meet the commanders, emperors, politicians and thinkers whose choices changed the course of Roman history.
General, statesman and dictator whose rise ended the old political order.
Rome’s first emperor and architect of the long imperial system.
Soldier-emperor who brought the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent.
The Roman legacy
Its languages evolved. Its laws were copied. Its roads remained. Its buildings inspired new capitals, and its political vocabulary still shapes debate today.