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Glite Dictionary
Eternal City

Eternal City

5.1
A poetic name for Rome that shows its long history
  • proper noun
  • Literature
translation icon : Ciudad Eterna
  • Yet an image could help them—and us—learn what was happening in the Eternal City.

Examples

  • Thanks to renovations of its classical venues, the Eternal City has never looked better.

  • Vittori lived and worked far from Rome and therefore experienced more intensely than others the effects of business practices in the Eternal City, according to which merchants typically waited many months for payment.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Rome, the Eternal City, is abandoned.

  • Rome, the Eternal City, is abandoned.

  • Millions of tourists flock to the Eternal City each year to admire its historic sites.

  • The Eternal City is famous for its ancient ruins and vibrant culture.

Synonyms

Rome
vsEternal City
421 1.0

The capital city of Italy on the Tiber River famous for ancient sites

is a poetic evocative name that highlights ancient prestige more than the ordinary city name
Roma
vsEternal City
21 2.8

The Italian name for the city of Rome, the capital of Italy

is a poetic evocative name rather than the standard local-language name

Surface Forms

Eternal City main

Morphology

eternal + city

The phrase is compositionally clear: a B1 learner who knows 'eternal' and 'city' will understand it literally as a 'city without end' and likely recognise it as a poetic or honorary name. However, that this specific epithet conventionally refers to Rome (the fixed proper-name usage) is cultural/world-knowledge and not fully predictable from the words alone, so the expression is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Eternal City may come from the idea that people long ago thought 'Rome' would last forever because it was the center of great empires and the Church. So writers and visitors began to call it the eternal city as a poetic name, and today the phrase means 'Rome'.