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Rome is taken and the Papal States end

1870 · Rome (Rome, Italy)

On 20 September 1870 Italian troops breach the walls of Rome at the Porta Pia, and the city becomes the capital of a united Italy. The Papal States, the popes' temporal kingdom for eleven centuries, are extinguished. Pius IX refuses the Italian Law of Guarantees, withdraws into the Vatican, and the Roman Question stands open until 1929.

Tagged: Catholic

The Event

Date
1870 (exact)
Era
Revolution and the Nineteenth Century; Standard periodization of Catholic history
Location
Rome; today Rome, Italy
Traditions
Catholicism
Streams
Catholic
Key figures
Pius IX, Victor Emmanuel II
Key texts
Law of Guarantees (1871)

Connections

Illustration for First Vatican Council History Event First Vatican Council 1869–1870 follows within two months of the council's suspension as Rome falls

Primary Sources

  • Law of Guarantees, Kingdom of Italy, 1871, recording the settlement Italy offered and Pius IX refused.

Secondary Sources

  • Chadwick, Owen. A History of the Popes, 1830-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
  • Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Hastings, Adrian, ed. A World History of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
  • MacCulloch, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London: Penguin, 2009.
  • O'Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Provenance: HIST-1340; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.

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