Soon after World War I, Rome witnessed the rise to power of Italian Fascism guided by Benito Mussolini, who marched on the city in 1922, eventually declaring a new Empire and allying Italy with Nazi Germany. The interwar period saw a rapid growth in the city's population, that surpassed 1,000,000 inhabitants. In World War II, due to its status of Open City, Rome largely escaped the tragic destiny of others European cities, but was occupied by the Germans from the Italian Armistice until its liberation on June 4th, 1944.[citation needed]

Rome grew momentously after the war, as one of the driving forces behind the "Italian economic miracle" of post-war reconstruction and modernisation. It became a fashionable city in the 1950s and early 1960s, the years of "la dolce vita" ("the sweet life"), with popular classic fims such as Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday and La Dolce Vita. being filmed in the city's iconic Cinecittà Studios. A new rising trend in population continued until the mid-1980s, when the commune had more than 2,800,000 residents; after that, population started to slowly decline as more residents moved to nearby suburbs.

 
Logo of the 1960 Summer OlympicsRome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics, with great success, using many ancient sites such as the Villa Borghese and the Thermae of Caracalla as venues. For the Olympic Games many new structures were created, notably the new large Olympic Stadium (which was also enlarged and renewed to host qualification and the final match of the 1990 FIFA World Cup, the Villaggio Olimpico (Olympic Village, created to host the athletes and redeveloped after the games as a residential district), etc. Rome is also an official candidate for the 2020 Olympic Games, along with Milan, Toronto, Brisbane and Montreal.

Many of the monuments of Rome were restored by the Italian state and by the Vatican for the 2000 Jubilee.

Being the capital city of Italy, Rome hosts all the principal institutions of the nation, like the Presidency of the Republic, the government (and its single Ministeri), the Parliament, the main judicial Courts, and the diplomatic representatives of all the countries for the states of Italy and the Vatican City (curiously, Rome also hosts, in the Italian part of its territory, the Embassy of Italy for the Vatican City, a unique case of an Embassy within the boundaries of its own country). Many international institutions are located in Rome, notably cultural and scientific ones - such as the American Institute, the British School, the French Academy, the Scandinavian Institutes, the German Archaeological Institute - for the honour of scholarship in the Eternal City, and humanitarian ones, such as the FAO. Rome, also hosts major international and worldwide political and cultural organisations, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Food Programme (WFT), the NATO Defence College and ICCROM, the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property.

 
The official logo of the Great 2000 Jubilee features its motto: Christ Yesterday, Today, Forever.Rome is currently an alpha- world city, along with Chicago, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Athens, Zurich, Mexico City, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Vienna and Dublin, to name a few. Rome was in 2008, also ranked 15th out of all the cities of the world for global importance, mainly for cultural experience.

Rome today is one of the most important tourist destinations of the world, due to the incalculable immensity of its archaeological and artistic treasures, as well as for the charm of its unique traditions, the beauty of its panoramic views, and the majesty of its magnificent "villas" (parks). Among the most significant resources are the many museums - (Musei Capitolini, the Vatican Museums, Galleria Borghese, including those dedicated to modern and contemporary art and great many others) - aqueducts, fountains, churches, palaces, historical buildings, the monuments and ruins of the Roman Forum, and the Catacombs.

Rome has a growing stock of contemporary and modern art and architecture. The National Gallery of Modern Art has works by Balla, Morandi, Pirandello, Carrà, De Chirico, De Pisis, Guttuso, Fontana, Burri, Mastroianni, Turcato, Kandisky, Cézanne on permanent exhibition. 2010 sees the opening of Rome's newest arts foundation, a contemporary art and architecture gallery designed by acclaimed Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. Known as Maxxi National Museum of XXIst century Art and Architecture it restores a dilapidated area with striking modern architecture. Maxxi [32] features a campus dedicated to culture, experimental research laboratories, international exchange and study and research. It is one of Rome's most ambitious modern architecture projects alongside Renzo Piano's Auditorium Parco della Musica  and Massimiliano Fuksas' Rome Convention Center, Centro Congressi Italia EUR, in the EUR district, due to open in 2011.[34] The Convention Center features a huge translucent container inside which is suspended a steel and teflon structure resembling a cloud and which contains meeting rooms and an auditorium with two piazzas open to the neighbourhood on either side.

Rome is the 3rd most visited city in the EU, after London and Paris, and receives an average of 7-10 million tourists a year, which sometimes doubles on holy years. The Colosseum (4 million tourists) and the Vatican Museums (4.2 million tourists) are the 39th and 37th (respectively) most visited places in the world, according to a recent study.

Among its hundreds of churches, Rome contains the only four Major Basilicas of the Catholic Church: San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome's cathedral, San Pietro in Vaticano, San Paolo fuori le Mura, and Santa Maria Maggiore. Along with the minor basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, those churches are the five Patriarchal Basilicas of the Pentarchy. finally, the five Basilicas, along with the two churches of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme and San Sebastiano fuori le Mura, constitute the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome.

The Bishop of Rome is the Pope