10 Famous People from Rome

10 Famous People from Rome

Rome is a city that once expanded its empire throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Today the city of Rome is known for its incalculable immensity of its archaeological and art treasures, as well as for the charm of its unique traditions, the beauty of its panoramic views, and the majesty of its magnificent “villas”.

From ancient Rome to a more contemporary Rome, here is a list of 10 famous people in Rome;

1. Julius Caesar

Bust of Julius Caesar – Flickr

Julius Ceasar was a Roman general and statesman who transformed Rome from a republic to an empire. He was born 12 July 100 BC in Rome as Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and subsequently became dictator of Rome from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC.

Apart from his military and political dominancy he is remembered for the creation of the Julian calendar. The calendar tool effect on 1 January AUC 709 (45 BC) and became the predominant calendar in the Roman Empire and the Western world until 1582.

On the Ides of March (15 March), 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group of rebellious senators led by Brutus and Cassius, who stabbed him to death.

2. Pope Urban VII

Pope Urban VII – Wikimedia Commons

Born on 4 August 1521 in Rome as Giovanni Battista Castagna. He was head of the Catholic Church, and ruler of the Papal States from 15 to 27 September 1590. His twelve-day papacy was the shortest in history.

Castagna was elected as pope on 15 September 1590 and selected the pontifical name of “Urban VII”. He gave rise to the world’s first known public smoking ban, as he threatened to excommunicate anyone who “took tobacco in the porchway of or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose”.

Urban VII died in Rome on 27 September 1590, shortly before midnight, of malaria.

3. Elsa Schiaparelli

Elsa Schiaparelli,1948 – Flickr

Elsa Schiaparelli was a fashion designer from an Italian aristocratic background. She was born on 10 September 1890. Her collections were famous for unconventional and artistic themes like the human body, insects, or trompe-l’œil, and for the use of bright colors like her “shocking pink”. She is one of the designers credited with offering the first clothes with visible zippers in 1930.

She created the house of Schiaparelli in Paris in 1927.  Elsa was one of the first designers to develop the wrap dress, taking inspiration from aprons to produce a design that would accommodate and flatter all female body types. In 1931, she divided skirt, a forerunner of shorts, which was worn by Lili de Alvarez at Wimbledon in 1931.

She died on 13 November 1973 at the age of 83.

4. Franceso Totti

Francesco Totti – Flickr

Franceso Totti, born 27 September 1976, is an Italian former professional footballer who could played as an attacking midfielder and as a forward. He is renowned for his vision, technique, and goalscoring ability. Totti spent his entire career playing solely for Roma and the Italy national team.

He is considered to be one of the greatest Italian players of all time and Roma’s greatest player ever having won a record eleven Oscar del Calcio awards from the Italian Footballers’ Association: five Serie A Italian Footballer of the Year awards, two Serie A Footballer of the Year awards, two Serie A Goal of the Year awards, one Serie A Goalscorer of the Year award, and one Serie A Young Footballer of the Year award. He also won the 2007 European Golden Shoe and the 2010 Golden Foot. In 2017, Totti he was awarded the Player’s Career Award and the UEFA President’s Award.

5. Sophia Loren

Sophia Loren, 1959 – Wikipedia

Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone was born on 20^th September in Rome is an Italian actress named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest female stars of Classical Hollywood cinema. She is one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, and the only living person on AFI’s list.

Loren has won five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, a Grammy Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1991, she received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievements.

6. Juana Carlos I of Spain

Juan Carlos, 2013 – Wikipedia

Juan Carlos, in full Juan Carlos Alfonso Victor María de Borbón y Borbón, was born on January 5, 1938, in Rome, Italy. He was the king of Spain from 1975 to 2014. Juan Carlos was instrumental in Spain’s peaceful transition to democracy.

Due to Franco’s, Francisco Franco took over the government of Spain after his victory in the Spanish Civil War in 1939, declining health, Juan Carlos first began periodically acting as Spain’s head of state in the summer of 1974. Franco died in November the following year and Juan Carlos became king on 22 November 1975, two days after Franco’s death, the first reigning monarch since 1931.

7. Sergion Leone

At the set of C’era una volta il West by Sergio Leone with Claudia Cardinale – Flickr

Sergio Leone was born on 3 January 1929 in Rome, Italy. He was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter, credited as the creator of the Spaghetti Western genre.  The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.

Leone is widely regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema. His film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His movies include the Dollars Trilogy of Westerns featuring Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); and the Once Upon a Time films: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Duck, You Sucker! (1971), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

He died on 30 April 1989 of a heart attack at the age of 60.

8. Julius Evola

Julius Evola – Wikimedia Commons

Julius Evola was born as Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola on 19^th May 1898 in Rome, Kingdom of Italy. He was an Italian philosopher, poet, and painter whose esoteric worldview featured antisemitic conspiracy theories and the occult.

Evola has been described as a “fascist intellectual”, a “radical traditionalist”, “antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular”, and as “the leading philosopher of Europe’s neofascist movement”. Many of his theories and writings were centered on his hostility toward Christianity and his idiosyncratic mysticism, occultism, and esoteric religious studies.

He died on 11 June 1974 in Rome from congestive heart failure.

9. Muzio Clementi

Muzio Clementi – Wikipedia

Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was born on 23 January 1752 in Rome, Italy. He was an Italian-born English composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, piano manufacturer who is acknowledged as the first to write specifically for the piano. He is best known for his collection of piano studies entitled Gradus ad Parnassum.

Filippo has been called “Father of the Piano” as he was among the first creators of both the modern piano as an instrument and the father of modern piano-playing.

Muzio died on 10 March 1832, after a short illness, aged eighty.

10. Joel McHale

Joel McHale, 2014 – Wikipedia

Joel Edward McHale was born on November 20, 1971, in Rome, Italy. He is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and television host. He is best known for hosting The Soup, 2004–2015, and his role as Jeff Winger on the NBC sitcom Community, 2009–2015.

In addition to acting and hosting, McHale has voiced Johnny Cage in the direct-to-video martial arts film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020), a role he reprised in the sequel Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021). He also voices X-PO in Lego Dimensions (2015–2017) and The Scientist in Fortnite (2019–present).