On this day in 1870, Italian troops entered Rome, bringing an end to centuries of papal rule over the city and sealing its place as the capital of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. The event, known as the “Capture of Rome”, marked a turning point that reduced the Pope’s temporal power to the Vatican and its immediate district.
The background to Italian unification
Throughout the 19th century, the movement for Italian unification, known as the Risorgimento, had gathered momentum. A patchwork of independent states, foreign-ruled territories, and the Papal States were gradually drawn into a unified nation under the leadership of King Victor Emmanuel II and his Prime Minister, Count Camillo di Cavour. By the late 1860s, much of the peninsula had been consolidated, but Rome remained under papal control, supported militarily by France.
French withdrawal opens the way
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870 forced Emperor Napoleon III to withdraw French troops from Rome, leaving Pope Pius IX without the external protection that had safeguarded his sovereignty. The Italian government seized the opportunity, ordering its army to move against the Papal States in September.
The fall of the Eternal City
On 20 September 1870, after a brief artillery bombardment, Italian forces breached Rome’s ancient walls near the Porta Pia. The papal defenders, a small force of Zouaves and volunteers, offered resistance but were quickly overwhelmed. To avoid further bloodshed, Pope Pius IX ordered a ceasefire. Rome was formally annexed to the Kingdom of Italy following a plebiscite held the following month, in which an overwhelming majority voted in favour of union.
Impact on papal power
The capture of Rome effectively ended the Pope’s temporal authority over the city and the surrounding Papal States. Pius IX rejected the legitimacy of the annexation and declared himself a “prisoner in the Vatican”, refusing to leave the Apostolic Palace. The dispute between the papacy and the Italian state persisted until 1929, when the Lateran Treaty established Vatican City as a sovereign entity, recognising the Pope’s independence while affirming Rome as Italy’s capital.
Legacy of unification
The occupation of Rome was the final act in the Risorgimento, transforming Italy into a unified nation with a single capital. It also marked a significant shift in the balance between secular and religious power in Europe, shaping relations between the Catholic Church and modern nation-states for decades to come.
REFH – Newshub, 20 September 2025
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