April 21st. If you find yourself in Rome on that day, you'll see the fireworks. You'll hear the parades. The locals call it Natale di Roma. It’s a birthday party for a city that has been around longer than most modern countries have had a name. But when we talk about the date of the founding of Rome, we are actually stepping into a messy, fascinating collision between ancient PR, starry-eyed mythology, and the cold, hard reality of archaeologists digging in the mud.
The traditional year is 753 BCE. Ask any Roman schoolchild, and they’ll spit that number out faster than a shot of espresso. But history isn't always a straight line.
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Where did 753 BCE even come from?
Honestly, the date is kind of a guess. A very educated, very old guess. The man we have to thank (or blame) for the specific date of the founding of Rome is Marcus Terentius Varro. He was a scholar living in the first century BCE, centuries after the city supposedly started. Varro wasn't there with a stopwatch. He worked backward using lists of consuls and shaky oral traditions.
He landed on 753 BCE. Before him, other Greeks and Romans had different ideas. Some thought it was 728 BCE. Others pushed it back to 814 BCE. Varro’s date just happened to stick because it fit the political narrative of the time.
It’s worth noting that the "April 21" part comes from the festival of Parilia. This was an ancient shepherd’s festival dedicated to Pales, the deity of shepherds. Since the legendary founders Romulus and Remus were raised by a shepherd after being saved by a she-wolf, the Romans decided it made perfect sense that the city was born on that specific festival day. It was good branding. Simple as that.
The Romulus Problem
You can't talk about the date of the founding of Rome without mentioning the twins. The story is wild. We have a vestal virgin named Rhea Silvia, a god (Mars) who gets her pregnant, and a king who wants the babies dead. They get tossed in the Tiber, wash up near the Palatine Hill, get suckered by a wolf, and eventually decide to build a city.
Then things get dark.
Romulus and Remus argue over which hill to use. Romulus wants the Palatine; Remus wants the Aventine. They look for "auguries"—basically bird-watching for divine signals. Remus sees six vultures first, but Romulus sees twelve later. They fight. Romulus kills his brother.
Whether you believe the murder happened or not, the Roman historians used this myth to anchor their timeline. Livy, one of Rome's most famous historians, writes about this as if it’s settled fact, even though he was writing hundreds of years after the fact. He was less interested in carbon dating and more interested in the identity of being Roman. To them, 753 BCE wasn't just a year; it was the moment they stopped being wanderers and started being a power.
What the archaeology actually shows
Here is where it gets tricky. If you talk to an archaeologist today, they’ll tell you that "founding" a city isn't usually a one-day event. It’s not like someone cut a ribbon and suddenly there was a forum and a senate.
Excavations on the Palatine Hill have turned up post-holes for huts that date back to the 10th century BCE. That’s much earlier than Varro’s 753 BCE. People were living there, eating there, and dying there long before Romulus supposedly picked up a plow.
But around the mid-8th century BCE—right around that 753 mark—something does change.
We start seeing evidence of more permanent structures. There’s a wall—often called the "Wall of Romulus"—that archaeologists like Andrea Carandini have argued dates specifically to the mid-700s. Carandini caused quite a stir in the academic world by suggesting that the myths might actually have a grain of truth. He found remains of a sacred boundary (a pomerium) that seems to match the legendary footprint of the early city.
Does this prove Romulus existed? No. But it suggests that the date of the founding of Rome isn't just a total fabrication. Something significant happened in the mid-8th century that turned a collection of scattered farming huts into a unified community.
Why the date became a political weapon
By the time Rome became an empire, the date was a tool. Emperors like Augustus loved the 753 BCE timeline because it allowed them to link their lineage back to Aeneas, the Trojan hero, and the gods themselves.
If you can prove your city was founded by the son of Mars, you have a pretty good excuse to conquer your neighbors.
The Roman calendar was actually oriented around this. They used the term Ab Urbe Condita (AUC), which means "from the founding of the city." So, instead of saying it was the year 44 BCE, a Roman might say it was the year 709 AUC. It was a constant reminder of their longevity. It made the city feel eternal.
Does the exact year really matter?
Probably not for the reasons we think.
In the grand scheme of things, whether it happened in 753, 728, or 800 doesn't change the impact Rome had on the world. However, the search for the date of the founding of Rome reveals how humans try to make sense of their past. We want a "Day One." We want a creator.
History is rarely that clean. Rome likely "founded" itself over a hundred-year period of merging villages and shared drainage projects (the Cloaca Maxima was a bigger deal for the city's birth than any bird-watching contest).
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How to explore the "founding" today
If you're a history nerd or just someone who likes old rocks, you can actually see the evidence of this timeline yourself. You don't need a time machine.
- Visit the Palatine Hill: Look for the "Iron Age Huts." They aren't much to look at—just holes in the ground protected by a roof—but they are the physical proof that people were living at the site of Rome’s "birth" long before the legends started.
- The Capitoline Museums: You’ll find the famous bronze statue of the Capitoline Wolf. Interestingly, the wolf itself might be medieval, and the twins were added later, but the imagery is the core of the 753 BCE identity.
- The Lapis Niger: Located in the Roman Forum, this is one of the oldest Latin inscriptions. It’s a ritual space that many ancient Romans believed was the tomb of Romulus himself.
- Be there on April 21: If you want to feel the weight of the date of the founding of Rome, stand in the Circus Maximus on the city's birthday. Seeing the historical reenactors in full legionary gear makes that 2,700-plus year history feel oddly present.
The 753 BCE date is a mixture of ritual, guesswork, and a little bit of archaeological coincidence. It’s a foundation myth that worked so well it became history. Whether Romulus killed Remus on a Tuesday in April doesn't really change the fact that the hill they fought over eventually ruled the known world.
When you look at the ruins of the Forum, you aren't just looking at marble. You're looking at the result of a very successful marketing campaign that started in the 8th century BCE and never really stopped.
To truly understand the origins of the city, stop looking for a single moment in time. Instead, look at the layers of soil. Rome wasn't built in a day, and it certainly wasn't "founded" in one, either. It was a slow-motion explosion of culture and power that used a specific date to give itself a starting line.
If you're planning a trip to investigate these sites, prioritize the Palatine Hill first thing in the morning to avoid the crowds. Check the local Roman municipal sites for specific Natale di Roma events if you're traveling in April, as many museums offer free entry and the city hosts unique light shows on the ancient ruins that specifically celebrate the 753 BCE timeline.