How Will Rome Change in the Future?

Rome’s most prominent features are all affected by geography. The ruins are weathered slowly every day, the Apennine Mountains raise up due to plate collision, and the beautiful coasts are tossed by water. These are simple concepts that we can easily grasp, even from our most basic knowledge of geographical concepts. All of these landscapes are beautiful today, but what will they look like in the future? Will they continue being sights to see or will they decay and rot into shells of what once was an immaculate city?

Let’s start by looking at the coast of Rome. This is probably the easiest place to start, because water changes everything so often. In the image below, you’ll see some cliffs on the coast of the city. There are a couple of things that will change about these cliffs over the years. First off, the waves will it the cliffs and cut in, creating wave cut notches. These notches will become more and more severe, until the cliff gives way and cannot support the weight any longer. The rocks above will fall into the ocean. I know I make this sound dramatic, but this would actually be quite an amazing sight to witness. Think about it. You get to watch the side of a cliff fall off. How cool is that? It won’t happen for thousands of years, but when it does, I hope there’s someone watching in awe.

We’ve already talked about how the ruins of Rome have weathered in the years since their erection. Consider this: Rome has been around for approximately 3000 years. So how will the ruins that are there right now change within the next 1000 years? Well, obviously the ruins will still be there. They’ll continue to weather as they are. They will continue to decay slowly. In 10,000 years, there may be just small remnants of what was once there.

The Apennine Mountains outside of Rome were formed by the collision of the Adriatic Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The foundation of the mountains was set about 65 million years ago. But how will they look years from now? The answer is simple. Look at other ranges that were formed similarly, or even in the exact same way. A perfect example here is the Atlas Mountains. They formed in the exact same way as the Apennines, and their foundation was set as little as half a billion years ago. The Apennines will likely follow the same path as the Atlas Mountains.

Rome will constantly be changing, along with the rest of the world. Geography mandates change, and we can predict certain changes based on our knowledge. Of course, I’ve only scratched the surface of things that will change about Rome, but, as with life, the only constant in geography is change. It’s just a matter of how.

Image sources: http://files.campus.edublogs.org/blog44.ca/dist/6/18/files/2011/12/PA225543-u1ukao.jpg

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/romanpantheon/frontdet.jpg

http://www.digitalapoptosis.com/archives/italy/Apennine.jpg