Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura

According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC. It became the centre first of the Roman Republic and then of the Roman Empire, and in the 4th century the capital of the Christian world. Between AD 271 and 275 the emperor Aurelian surrounded the city with walls that absorbed existing structures such as the Pyramid of Cestius and part of an aqueduct. As much as a sixth of the circuit is estimated to consist of such earlier buildings.

The historic centre within the walls was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1980. In 1990 the property was extended to the 17th-century walls of Pope Urban VIII and came to include the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See in the city and the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Relations between the Holy See and Italy were settled by the Lateran Treaty, signed in the Lateran Palace on 11 February 1929, which lists the buildings with extraterritorial status.

Saint Paul Outside the Walls was founded by the emperor Constantine over the place held to be the apostle Paul's burial, and the first basilica is said to have been consecrated by Pope Sylvester in 324. In 386 Theodosius I began a far larger church. On 15 July 1823 a fire started by a workman repairing the roof destroyed almost the whole building, and the present basilica is a 19th-century reconstruction.