- Jul 10, 2014
- 14,479
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It's the FINAL stage. What's left, but one more sprint.
All the praise goes to @Devil's Elbow for his magnificent Stage-by-stage analysis. There is just no words to describe his humongous effort, hats off.
forum.cyclingnews.com
Map and profile
Start
Now I know I deliberately didn’t write anything about Roma last year because it’s so famous (and I was short on time), but I’m partially reversing course here. I don’t see the point in talking about the antique period because I’m not going to be able to tell you anything you didn’t know yet while keeping this post at a somewhat reasonable length, but there’s plenty of less commonly known history after the zenith of its power.
Ancient Roma peaked somewhere between 1 and 2 million residents in the 1st century. The first signs of decline for both city and empire came during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180), last of the great emperors of High Antiquity, who dealt with the first of the great barbarian (for want of a better word) invasions as well as the devastating Antonine Plague (which marked the beginning of population decline). The ninety years after his reign were characterised by constant misrule, culminating in the half-century of almost uninterrupted civil wars and invasions known as the Crisis of the Third Century. By the time Aurelian rose to power in 270, the Empire was split in three parts, all of which were partially overrun by the invading hordes. In just five years of rule, he reunited the empire, beat back the worst of the invasions, and both started and finished Rome’s Aurelian Walls, which would serve as the city’s main defensive line until the concept of city walls became obsolete.
Roma itself was down to about half a million inhabitants by this point, and while the population decline was then arrested for a century and a bit as the Crisis waned, things were not exactly about to improve. It was stripped of its status as the capital by the great reformist emperor Diocletian in 286, mostly to make the unwieldy empire more governable but perhaps also because Diocletian appears to have genuinely disliked the city. This dislike was shared by later Christian emperors, as Roma remained a centre of what they regarded as paganism, and the surviving institutions from the heyday of the Empire were mostly suppressed under Theodosius I (the last man to rule an undivided Roman Empire) at the end of the 4th century.
By this time, the Empire had lost what control it had over the invading tribes after getting crushed at the Battle of Adrianople in 376. Its eastern half (referred to by historians as the Byzantine Empire from that point onwards) would survive the ensuing turmoil, its western half would not. By the time the Western Roman Empire fell (traditionally dated to 476), Roma had been sacked by the Goths in 410 and the Vandals in 455. In addition, the 5th century saw the end of shipments of grain from Africa, which for centuries had fed the city. This combination would drive the population into the low tens of thousands, living in a city increasingly consisting of ruins.
The era of barbarian rule, mostly as a part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, ended when the Byzantines invaded in the mid-6th century, initiating the Gothic Wars I discussed earlier. Unlike most of Italy, Roma stayed under Byzantine control after the Lombards invaded. However, the Lombard threat remained a constant presence even after the initial invasion, and with Constantinople itself severely under threat from the Arabs from the 7th century onwards, the ability of the Byzantines to respond dwindled to nothing. The resulting power vacuum was seized upon by the Papacy, which had slowly grown more influential over the centuries. When the Lombards took the last Byzantine possessions other than Roma itself, the reigning Pope Stephen II sought the help of the Franks. Their king, Pepin the Short (the father of Charlemagne), defeated the Lombards and formally gave the Pope the authority over the former Byzantine area in 756. While effective control was initially limited to Roma and its surroundings, this is where the Papal States are born, and for the next eleven centuries the popes would have both temporal and spiritual power.
However, this newfound independence did not immediately lead to a new era of glory. Instead, as Frankish power waned, the papacy was fought over constantly by the various aristocratic families of Rome. Highlights from this era of chaos include the corpse of a dead pope being dug up and put on trial as well as the decades of so-calles pornocracy, where a series of mistresses exacted control over successive papal elections. The chaos ended when Otto I was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962. While the Holy Roman Empire was a confederacy, not an actual empire, it did hold sway over both the Papal States and the papal selections for a century. Then, the Papacy managed to install the forerunner of what is now the conclave. This sparked the Investiture Controversy, which I talked about on stage 12 when discussing Canossa. The – not entirely complete – victory of the former helped pave the way for a divided Italy and Germany, as well as of course strengthening the Papacy.
Having said that, there was one area where the Popes were losing power in the 12th century: Roma itself. They were forced to cede much of their temporal power to the citizen-controlled Commune of Rome. In practice, the Commune saw a return to the constant infighting of the aristocratic families as well as severe tension with the Papacy. The Commune even supported the Ghibellines for quite some time. The result was the Popes exiling themselves to Avignon for most of the 14th century. The initial attempt to return to Roma was a mess, with antipopes in Avignon (the so-called Western Schism) and renewed power struggles with the Commune. Eventually, the Roman Papacy emerged victorious in both conflicts. Now, the Popes were at the zenith of their power, and they used this status to both greatly expand the size of the Papal States and launch a building and investment spree that saw the centre of the Italian Renaissance shift to Rome. This era ended with a new sacking at the hands of the Spanish Empire in 1527, an event that both set Roma back significantly for a time and helped spur the Counter-Reformation (which the Spanish, at least initially, desired much more than the Papacy did). As the height of Spanish power in the world passed, that of the Popes was renewed. The 18th century therefore mirrored the Roman Renaissance in many ways, especially in its Baroque building spree.
From the Napoleonic era onwards, papal reign was increasingly challenged. It was briefly annexed twice by the French, but the real struggles came in the time of Pius IX, the longest-reigning Pope in history. Elected shortly before the revolutions of 1848 (which also resulted in the First Italian War of Independence), many in Italy saw him as a potential leading figure within a more liberal, possibly united Italy. He would indeed be a leading figure… by making a hard turn against both the liberals and unification, greatly contributing to the failure of both causes by formally disavowing them. The backlash was such that he was driven out of Roma for some time until being restored with French help. The nascent Italian state claimed two-thirds of Papal territory in 1860, but the remaining French garrison kept Roma and most of modern Lazio out of its hands. However, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 led this garrison to withdraw to France, causing the Papal defences to crumble upon impact. Thus, the final acts of German and Italian unification were linked. Tensions between Italy and the Papacy were not resolved until 1929, when the Vatican State was carved out.
Moving away from religious matters at last, Roma was almost immediately made the capital of Italy. As I’m up to three pages (so much for reasonable length) and I’ve gone through the broader strokes of more recent Italian history on previous stages, I will limit my focus to Roma here. Prior to unification, there had been little investment in industry, and even after it Roma was never made a centre of industrialization. Although the new government apparatuses, the development of a large service industry, the seemingly endless rise of tourism and the film sector have all contributed to great economic and – until the 1980s – population growth since then, Roma remains somewhat poorer and less developed than the largest cities in the north, sitting somewhere between it and the south in more ways than just geographically. Its cultural significance is of course eternal, and although orders of magnitude smaller, its sporting relevance is nothing to be sneezed at either, having hosted two FIFA World Cup finals and one Summer Olympics amongst others. With the race’s roots being in Milan, it has not been as central to the Giro, hosting almost annually until about 1960 but only appearing for the seventh time since 1970 this year.
With how much I’ve talked about the Papacy in this post, I needed a fitting picture… (by Anne Offermanns at Wikimedia Commons)
Route
After paying tribute to the late Pope Francis in the neutralisation, it’s time for the same out-and-back to Ostia as last year. At the beachfront, on the outskirts of Ostia there is an intermediate sprint. Once back in Rome, we have eight laps of the same circuit as last year. However, there is one key difference: there is a Red Bull Golden Kilometre this year!!! Have you heard about it yet???
All jokes aside, the real change is that they’ve moved the finish location once again. This time, we are finishing next to the Circus Maximus. This makes for a visibly uphill finish – the profile claims a gradient of 5%, but that’s impossible when the final kilometre has just 9 metres of elevation gain. I had a look at the regional topographic maps and the elevation figures are correct, so needless to say, take that gradient with the same amount of salt an Italian would tell you to add to the water you are boiling your pasta in. In any case, none of this should deter the sprinters.
Finish
And with that, my biggest-ever project is over. The Word file I’m working in sits just shy of 27000 words. I regret nothing. I hope you all enjoyed it too.
All the praise goes to @Devil's Elbow for his magnificent Stage-by-stage analysis. There is just no words to describe his humongous effort, hats off.
Giro d'Italia - Giro d'Italia 2025: Stage-by-stage analysis
It’s that time of year again. The amore infinito of cycling fans for all things Giro has been tested repeatedly in the past few years, will this be the year the flame is rekindled? Judging by the route, it can go both ways. It has very few out-and-out sprint stages, but the same is true for the...
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Stage 21: Roma – Roma
The epilogue. I do miss the Giro ending with time trials, but at least the sprinters haven’t exactly had a whole lot of open goals this year…Map and profile
Start
Now I know I deliberately didn’t write anything about Roma last year because it’s so famous (and I was short on time), but I’m partially reversing course here. I don’t see the point in talking about the antique period because I’m not going to be able to tell you anything you didn’t know yet while keeping this post at a somewhat reasonable length, but there’s plenty of less commonly known history after the zenith of its power.
Ancient Roma peaked somewhere between 1 and 2 million residents in the 1st century. The first signs of decline for both city and empire came during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180), last of the great emperors of High Antiquity, who dealt with the first of the great barbarian (for want of a better word) invasions as well as the devastating Antonine Plague (which marked the beginning of population decline). The ninety years after his reign were characterised by constant misrule, culminating in the half-century of almost uninterrupted civil wars and invasions known as the Crisis of the Third Century. By the time Aurelian rose to power in 270, the Empire was split in three parts, all of which were partially overrun by the invading hordes. In just five years of rule, he reunited the empire, beat back the worst of the invasions, and both started and finished Rome’s Aurelian Walls, which would serve as the city’s main defensive line until the concept of city walls became obsolete.
Roma itself was down to about half a million inhabitants by this point, and while the population decline was then arrested for a century and a bit as the Crisis waned, things were not exactly about to improve. It was stripped of its status as the capital by the great reformist emperor Diocletian in 286, mostly to make the unwieldy empire more governable but perhaps also because Diocletian appears to have genuinely disliked the city. This dislike was shared by later Christian emperors, as Roma remained a centre of what they regarded as paganism, and the surviving institutions from the heyday of the Empire were mostly suppressed under Theodosius I (the last man to rule an undivided Roman Empire) at the end of the 4th century.
By this time, the Empire had lost what control it had over the invading tribes after getting crushed at the Battle of Adrianople in 376. Its eastern half (referred to by historians as the Byzantine Empire from that point onwards) would survive the ensuing turmoil, its western half would not. By the time the Western Roman Empire fell (traditionally dated to 476), Roma had been sacked by the Goths in 410 and the Vandals in 455. In addition, the 5th century saw the end of shipments of grain from Africa, which for centuries had fed the city. This combination would drive the population into the low tens of thousands, living in a city increasingly consisting of ruins.
The era of barbarian rule, mostly as a part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, ended when the Byzantines invaded in the mid-6th century, initiating the Gothic Wars I discussed earlier. Unlike most of Italy, Roma stayed under Byzantine control after the Lombards invaded. However, the Lombard threat remained a constant presence even after the initial invasion, and with Constantinople itself severely under threat from the Arabs from the 7th century onwards, the ability of the Byzantines to respond dwindled to nothing. The resulting power vacuum was seized upon by the Papacy, which had slowly grown more influential over the centuries. When the Lombards took the last Byzantine possessions other than Roma itself, the reigning Pope Stephen II sought the help of the Franks. Their king, Pepin the Short (the father of Charlemagne), defeated the Lombards and formally gave the Pope the authority over the former Byzantine area in 756. While effective control was initially limited to Roma and its surroundings, this is where the Papal States are born, and for the next eleven centuries the popes would have both temporal and spiritual power.
However, this newfound independence did not immediately lead to a new era of glory. Instead, as Frankish power waned, the papacy was fought over constantly by the various aristocratic families of Rome. Highlights from this era of chaos include the corpse of a dead pope being dug up and put on trial as well as the decades of so-calles pornocracy, where a series of mistresses exacted control over successive papal elections. The chaos ended when Otto I was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962. While the Holy Roman Empire was a confederacy, not an actual empire, it did hold sway over both the Papal States and the papal selections for a century. Then, the Papacy managed to install the forerunner of what is now the conclave. This sparked the Investiture Controversy, which I talked about on stage 12 when discussing Canossa. The – not entirely complete – victory of the former helped pave the way for a divided Italy and Germany, as well as of course strengthening the Papacy.
Having said that, there was one area where the Popes were losing power in the 12th century: Roma itself. They were forced to cede much of their temporal power to the citizen-controlled Commune of Rome. In practice, the Commune saw a return to the constant infighting of the aristocratic families as well as severe tension with the Papacy. The Commune even supported the Ghibellines for quite some time. The result was the Popes exiling themselves to Avignon for most of the 14th century. The initial attempt to return to Roma was a mess, with antipopes in Avignon (the so-called Western Schism) and renewed power struggles with the Commune. Eventually, the Roman Papacy emerged victorious in both conflicts. Now, the Popes were at the zenith of their power, and they used this status to both greatly expand the size of the Papal States and launch a building and investment spree that saw the centre of the Italian Renaissance shift to Rome. This era ended with a new sacking at the hands of the Spanish Empire in 1527, an event that both set Roma back significantly for a time and helped spur the Counter-Reformation (which the Spanish, at least initially, desired much more than the Papacy did). As the height of Spanish power in the world passed, that of the Popes was renewed. The 18th century therefore mirrored the Roman Renaissance in many ways, especially in its Baroque building spree.
From the Napoleonic era onwards, papal reign was increasingly challenged. It was briefly annexed twice by the French, but the real struggles came in the time of Pius IX, the longest-reigning Pope in history. Elected shortly before the revolutions of 1848 (which also resulted in the First Italian War of Independence), many in Italy saw him as a potential leading figure within a more liberal, possibly united Italy. He would indeed be a leading figure… by making a hard turn against both the liberals and unification, greatly contributing to the failure of both causes by formally disavowing them. The backlash was such that he was driven out of Roma for some time until being restored with French help. The nascent Italian state claimed two-thirds of Papal territory in 1860, but the remaining French garrison kept Roma and most of modern Lazio out of its hands. However, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 led this garrison to withdraw to France, causing the Papal defences to crumble upon impact. Thus, the final acts of German and Italian unification were linked. Tensions between Italy and the Papacy were not resolved until 1929, when the Vatican State was carved out.
Moving away from religious matters at last, Roma was almost immediately made the capital of Italy. As I’m up to three pages (so much for reasonable length) and I’ve gone through the broader strokes of more recent Italian history on previous stages, I will limit my focus to Roma here. Prior to unification, there had been little investment in industry, and even after it Roma was never made a centre of industrialization. Although the new government apparatuses, the development of a large service industry, the seemingly endless rise of tourism and the film sector have all contributed to great economic and – until the 1980s – population growth since then, Roma remains somewhat poorer and less developed than the largest cities in the north, sitting somewhere between it and the south in more ways than just geographically. Its cultural significance is of course eternal, and although orders of magnitude smaller, its sporting relevance is nothing to be sneezed at either, having hosted two FIFA World Cup finals and one Summer Olympics amongst others. With the race’s roots being in Milan, it has not been as central to the Giro, hosting almost annually until about 1960 but only appearing for the seventh time since 1970 this year.
With how much I’ve talked about the Papacy in this post, I needed a fitting picture… (by Anne Offermanns at Wikimedia Commons)
Route
After paying tribute to the late Pope Francis in the neutralisation, it’s time for the same out-and-back to Ostia as last year. At the beachfront, on the outskirts of Ostia there is an intermediate sprint. Once back in Rome, we have eight laps of the same circuit as last year. However, there is one key difference: there is a Red Bull Golden Kilometre this year!!! Have you heard about it yet???
All jokes aside, the real change is that they’ve moved the finish location once again. This time, we are finishing next to the Circus Maximus. This makes for a visibly uphill finish – the profile claims a gradient of 5%, but that’s impossible when the final kilometre has just 9 metres of elevation gain. I had a look at the regional topographic maps and the elevation figures are correct, so needless to say, take that gradient with the same amount of salt an Italian would tell you to add to the water you are boiling your pasta in. In any case, none of this should deter the sprinters.
Finish
And with that, my biggest-ever project is over. The Word file I’m working in sits just shy of 27000 words. I regret nothing. I hope you all enjoyed it too.
Last edited:
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