Rioni of Rome: Encyclopedia II - Rioni of Rome - The Modern ages

Rioni of Rome - The Modern ages

During the Renaissance there was a deep reorganization of the city. A lot of buildings, streets and fountains were built within the Aurelian walls, so it became necessary to limit the rioni exactly.

In 1586 Sixtus V broke the tradition of 13 rioni adding another one: Borgo. This change created a balanced situation that, thanks to the small increase of the population, remained the same until the XIX century.

In 1744 Pope Benedict XIV, because of frequent misunderstanding, decided to replan the political division of Rome, giving the responsibility of it to count Bernardini, that was so good at it that his division did not change much until 1921. During this period the strong feelings of belonging to a rione or another were born, even if they have much older roots.

In 1798 there was a rationalization of the politic division creating 12 rioni (in brackets there is the modern one they correspond to):

1. Terme (part of Monti);
2. Suburra (part of Monti);
3. Quirinale (Trevi);
4. Pincio (Colonna);
5. Marte (Campo Marzio);
6. Bruto (Ponte);
7. Pompeo (Regola and Parione);
8. Flaminio (Sant'Eustachio);
9. Pantheon (Pigna and Sant'Angelo);
10. Campidoglio (Campitelli e Ripa);
11. Gianicolo (Trastevere);
12. Vaticano (Borgo);

Soon after this, during the domination of Napoleon, Rome was split up in 8 parts, now called Giustizie (meaning "justices" in Italian):

1. Monti;
2. Trevi;
3. Colonna e Campo Marzio;
4. Ponte e Borgo;
5. Parione e Regola;
6. Sant'Eustachio e Pigna;
7. Campitelli, Sant'Angelo e Ripa;
8. Trastevere.

This was the smaller rioni were joint to the greater ones. The good point of the reorganization was that French people obliged to write on each street the name and the areas it belonged to: for the first time there was no ambiguity about the limits of the rioni.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Modern ages", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki