The Eternal City is truly a feast for the senses — it might even leave you so overwhelmed that you’ll have a hard time coming up with an original Instagram caption for that Roman holiday pic. You don’t have to worry, though: just dig into our list of 70 memorable quotes about Rome and you’ll feel as inspired as I did while putting it together.
Table of Contents
Short Instagram captions about Rome
These Rome quotes are as catchy as it gets, so they’re perfect for social media!
Every one soon or late comes round by Rome.
Robert Browning
Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.
Anatole Broyard
Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
G. K. Chesterton
Rome is a broken mirror, the falling straps of a dress, a puzzle of astonishing complexity. It is an iceberg floating below our terrace, all its ballasts hidden beneath the surface.
Anthony Doerr
In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.
E. M. Forster
I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.
Giotto
How is it possible to say an unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I thought I knew everything when I came to Rome, but I soon found I had everything to learn.
Edmonia Lewis
Rome seems a comfort to those with the ambitious soul of an Artist or a Conqueror.
Pietros Maneos
I’m sure when they partied when Rome was burning, that was a really great party.
Adam McKay
Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome: young and decrepit, poor and billionaire, intimate and withered, small and infinite.
Aldo Palazzeschi
I find this quote pretty suggestive in that it reminds me how a country of such sharp contrasts like Italy couldn’t really have a more fitting city for its capital.
A fool is one who admires other cities without visiting Rome.
Francesco Petrarca
Rome, the city where memories were chiseled in marble.
Elif Shafak
Famous proverbs about Rome
No other city has become the subject of so many popular sayings, probably because the centrality of Rome to Western history remains pretty much unrivaled.
Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam. — All roads lead to Rome.
Unkown
Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi.— Rome capital of the world keeps the reins of the round globe.
Unkown
Roma locuta, causa finita est. — Rome has spoken, the case is closed.
Unkown
Si fueris Romæ, Romano vivito more. — When in Rome (do as the Romans do).
Unkown
Chi Roma non vede, nulla crede. — Seeing Rome is believing it.
Unkown
Domandando si va a Roma. — Asking around will take you to Rome.
Unkown
Rome wasn’t build in a day.
Unkown
Food-themed Rome quotes
You already know you’re not supposed to add cream to carbonara (or do you?); you might not be fully aware, though, of how much both chefs and well-informed foodies obsess over the seasonality and simplicity of Roman cuisine, as the following quotes about Rome show.
If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat.
Anthony Bourdain
But beyond the extravagance of Rome’s wealthiest citizens and flamboyant gourmands, a more restrained cuisine emerged for the masses: breads baked with emmer wheat; polenta made from ground barley; cheese, fresh and aged, made from the milk of cows and sheep; pork sausages and cured meats; vegetables grown in the fertile soil along the Tiber … The pillars of Italian cuisine, like the pillars of the Pantheon, are indeed old and sturdy.
Matt Goulding
Rome is possibly my favorite city in the world. I have such fond memories there — most of them food related.
Mallory Jansen
The beauty of Rome is that you can wander into a pizzeria just about anywhere and get a real Italian pizza that’s thankfully worlds away from the Super Supreme I used to order at Pizza Hut as a kid.
Ed Stoppard
Ancient Rome quotes
Aphorisms have been somewhat of a Roman tradition since the days of the Republic, so for these quotes about Rome to have stood the test of time they must truly remarkable.
I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.
Augustus
If one thing, the first Roman emperor was really effective in defining the impressive prosperity brought about to the polity by the fierce outward expansion that he led. Talk about legacy!
I am a Roman citizen.
Cicero
O kindly Sun, in your shining chariot, who / Herald the day, then hide it, to be born again / New yet the same, you will never know anything / Mightier than Rome!
Horace
What could I do at Rome? I don’t know how to lie.
Juvenal
Rome, a fortunate, invincible and eternal city.
Livy
You command my desire for the queen of cities to be mitigated: you alone are a Rome to me.
Martial
What is better than Rome?
Ovid
Let the Roman offspring be powerful, by Italian valor.
Virgil
Quotes about Rome by movie actors and directors
World-famous movie stars are fascinated by the Eternal City as much as the next guy, yet they might have a tad more talent to translate that awe into words.
I was born in Hollywood, grew up in Paris, but only Rome feels like «my» city.
Tina Aumont
I just love Rome. It really does cast a spell on you.
Alec Baldwin
Rome is magic.
Maria Grazia Cucinotta
Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome.
Robert De Niro
In ‘Roma’, I wanted to get across the idea that underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close. I am always conscious of that, and it thrills me.
Federico Fellini
Rome! By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.
Audrey Hepburn
For millennia, Rome has embodied and repelled every cliché, description, and act of comprehension or explanation applied to it. As a city, it has been built and destroyed and rebuilt by — and has celebrated and signified and outlasted — caesars and barbarians and popes and Fascists and prophets and artists and pilgrims and schemers and migrants and lovers and fools.
Shawn Levy
Personally, I like Rome very much. It’s sort of a moderate, tranquil jungle where one can hide…
Marcello Mastroianni in “La Dolce Vita”
This quintessential movie from the golden age of Roman high life has contributed to the city’s allure like hardly any other, and this quote perfectly illustrates the casual self-satisfaction that we all love about Romans.
Rome has New York’s formlessness, aimlessness, a kind of hard-boiled sophistication, blasé about everything.
Paul Morrissey
Oddly enough, I’m not religious but I’m also very fond of St Peter’s in Rome. When I’m there, I always know there’s a good meal not far away.
Jonathan Pryce
Rome is unlike any other city. It’s a big museum, a living room that one must cross on tiptoes.
Alberto Sordi
Rome is a city where in every corner you have a reminder of the sacred world.
Paolo Sorrentino
Rome quotes from the fashion world
Way before Milan was crowned the fashion capital of the world, the first fashion shows held in Italy took place in Rome — and the city’s nonchalant glamor continues to inspire designers and fashionistas alike.
Paris has the elegance of harmonies and grandeur, London has the elegance of class and prestige, Rome has the elegance of humanity and history.
Gianfranco Ferré
Rome is a little bit different. There is something in Rome, incredible, like in a Fellini movie. Everybody’s screaming and laughing very loud.
Alessandro Michele
If a Northern Italian tells you that Bologna is the northernmost city of Southern Italy, they’re most likely joking. Technically, Rome is not in the South either… but culturally, that’s another story altogether.
In Rome, I particularly love the history, churches, sculptures and architecture and the fact that you can walk along a tiny cobbled street and turn the corner to find the Trevi Fountain.
Philip Treacy
Rome holds my psyche in balance. Whenever I’m there, it’s like a holiday.
Giambattista Valli
Quotes about Rome by classic authors
Sometimes even geniuses have a hard time choosing the most noteworthy aspects of Rome, out of so many, to talk about — but when they do, we’re left with timeless words.
Oh Rome! My country! City of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, lone mother of dead empires!
Lord Byron
Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can image in its full and awful grandeur!
Charles Dickens
Rome — the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.
George Eliot
She had always been fond of history, and here was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.
Henry James
Methinks I will not die quite happy without having seen something of that Rome.
Walter Scott
You sometimes get bored of Rome by the second month of your stay, but never by the sixth, and if you stay until the twelfth month, you are taken by the idea of settling down there.
Stendhal
From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.
Mark Twain
Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life… Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rome quotes by contemporary authors
Not even the speed of modern life has weakened the splendor of Italy’s capital, as these quotes about Rome from present-day writers reveal.
Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Living in Rome is a way of losing life.
Ennio Flaiano
Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.
Graham Joyce
You look at passers-by in Rome and think, ‘Do they know what they have here?’
Frank McCourt
I can’t tell whether the author of “Angela’s Ashes” was being sarcastic or naïve here. Though Neapolitans would beg to differ, telling Romans theirs is not the most beautiful city in the world would probably trigger a harsh response from most.
If we could be reborn wherever we chose, how crowded Rome would be, populated by souls who had spent their previous lives longing to inhabit a villa on the Janiculum Hill.
Francine Prose
The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It’s a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There’s nowhere else like it.
Claire Tomalin
More quotes about Rome
I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.
Jonathan Agnew
How great Rome was, its very ruins tell.
Francesco Albertini
Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today.
Arthur Erickson
All roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirs also is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which no traveler knows the name, some city, they all seem to hint, even more eternal.
Richard Le Gallienne
Rome is the capital of history, culture, religion. Rome is Italy.
Uto Ughi
Rome is the example of what happens when the monuments of a city last too long.
Andy Warhol
We hope the quotes about Rome we’ve listed here will be the perfect match for your next Instagram picture and help you get even more likes and followers. For more inspiration, check out our list of the most inspirational quotes about Italy and the best quotes about Venice, the city of canals!
Inspiring quotes about Rome – Pin it!
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