Everything Everywhere Daily · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
The Imperial period saw Rome transform into a city of marble, with emperors like Augustus, Nero, and Trajan commissioning monumental structures such as the Colosseum and Hadrian's Pantheon. Some scholarship suggests Rome's population may have peaked at 1.5 million people in the second century AD, marking it as the peak of ancient Rome.
“Augustus famously claimed that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it clothed in marble.”
“Following Nero's fall, the Flavian emperors built the Colosseum, completed around 80 AD, partly over Nero's former palace complex.”
“Some scholarship places Rome's maximum ancient population in the second century at perhaps as many as 1.5 million people.”