POPULATION OF ROME

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 792, 12 October 1929, Page 30

POPULATION OF ROME

TWO CENTURIES OF CHANGE Rome has now more than 900,000 inhabitants. The legislation against “urbanesimo,” or the tendency to drift toward cities, is gradually freeing the capital from vagabonds, beggars and the country folk who come to seek for employment for which they are obviously unsuited. These are promptly sent “back to the land.” In the near future Italy will have three cities —Milan, Rome and Naples—each with a million inhabitants. The present calculation is, needless to say, exclusive of the population of the Vatican City. Only once before in its long history has Rome had so many inhabitants, and that was nearly two thousand years ago under “the good Augustus,” when the population was well over a million. It sank, rapidly as time went on, and in the fourteenth century, when the Papal Court was at Avignon, it had dwindled to 17.000. In 1527, at the time of the Sack of Rome, it was Still below 20,000. The population of Rome increased slowly during the nineteenth century under thte Popes, and veVy rapidly after Rome had become the. capital of Italy. In 1870 it was 226,000, in 1901 it had risen to 462,000, in 1924 it was 736,000, and within the last seven 3’cars there has been an increase of some 211,000 inhabitants, in spite of the housing crisis.