Latium

Latium has played an important role in history owing to its status as the host of the capital city of Rome, at one time the cultural and political center of the Roman Empire.

[11] The name is most likely derived from the Latin word "latus", meaning "wide", expressing the idea of "flat land" (in contrast to the local Sabine high country).

The Etruscans, from their home region of Etruria, exerted a strong cultural and political influence on Latium from about the 8th century BC onward.

However, they were unable to assert political hegemony over the region, which was controlled by small, autonomous city-states in a manner roughly analogous to the state of affairs that prevailed in Ancient Greece.

By the 10th century BC, archaeology records a slow development in agriculture from the entire area of Latium with the establishment of numerous villages.

[14][15] A fixed local center seemed necessary as the center of the region cannot have been one of the villages, but must have been a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the district, where members of the clans met for purposes of administration and amusement, and where they obtained a safer shelter for themselves in case of war: in ordinary circumstances such a place was not at all or but scantily inhabited.

[16] The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium, which offered to settlers a secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the newcomers.

[20] Although Alba Longa enjoyed a position of religious primacy, the Alban presidency never held any significant political power over Latium, e.g. it was never the capital of a Latin state.

"salt road") was paved from Rome down to Ostia on the northern bank of the river Tiber - the closest salt-field in Western Italy.

The children of freedmen provided an important source for Roman armies and gave Rome a definite edge in manpower over other cities of the time.

[26] The emperor Augustus officially united all of present-day Italy into a single geo-political entity, Italia, dividing it into eleven regions.

[28] The strengthening of the religious and ecclesiastical aristocracy led to continuous power struggles between lords and the Roman bishop until the middle of the 16th century.

[28] During the period when the papacy resided in Avignon, France (1309–1377), the feudal lords' power increased due to the absence of the Pope from Rome.

[28] After the short-lived Roman Republic (18th century), the region's annexation to France by Napoleon Bonaparte in February 1798, Latium became again part of the Papal States in October, 1799.

[30] On 20 September 1870, the capture of Rome, during the reign of Pope Pius IX, and France's defeat at Sedan, completed Italian unification, and Latium was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.

Originally meant as administrative districts of the central state, the regions acquired a significant level of autonomy following a constitutional reform in 2001.