ABSTRACT
Some significant moments in the history of Rome as the capital of Italy are closely linked with modifications made to political public space between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, intending public spaces not simply as those in which social urban life unfolds, but also those connoted by important symbolic and ceremonial functions, spaces characterized by a particular visibility and a more or less recurring epiphany of power. In Rome public space is present in three diverse dimensions: national, municipal and religious; distinct and competitive dimensions, and in some cases conflictual. This is a further aspect of the uniqueness of Rome and its twofold status as the capital of a national State and the seat of Catholicism.
