The 1st Paralympic Games were held in Rome in conjunction with the 1960 Summer Olympics, marking the first time such events coincided.

On 15 June 1955, at the 50th IOC Session in Paris, France, Rome won the right to host the 1960 Games, having beaten Brussels, Mexico City, Tokyo, Detroit, Budapest and finally Lausanne.

[2] Toronto was initially interested in the bidding, but was automatically removed from consideration when it failed to return the IOC's mandatory questionnaire by the deadline.

The questionnaire may have been mislaid in the confusion following the death of the Toronto bid's chief organiser, Robert Hood Saunders, in a plane crash weeks before the deadline.

Athletes from Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago would represent the new (British) West Indies Federation, competing as "Antilles", but this nation would only exist for this single Olympiad.