began to appear even in Rome. The arrival the railway was important factor; at the end of the 1850s the town was linked by rail to both Florence and Naples, and in 1867 work started on the Stazione Termini. Despite the absence of any major industry, the population of the town had been increasing since the second decade of the century; between 1850 and 1870 it rose by nearly 70,000. But it was only after the end of the papal that serious change began, In the ranks of the Risorgimento it was taken for granted that Rome was to be the capital city the new unified state. On 20 September 1870 Victor Emmanuel's troops broke through the wall at Porta Pia, and preparations for transferring the functions of the capital from Florence to Rome were immediately launched. One of the first steps was to start work a town plan. A commissione di architetti-ingegneri was appointed only ten days after the city fell; its task was "to study the extension and embellishment of Rome and particularly the project for building new blocks in that part most readily adaptable to new construction 3 The main reason for acting so fast was probably the need to arrange offices for the public administration and homes for the civil servants, as well as organizing for the substantial increase in population that was also expected. Moreover there was certainly a sense of urgency about transforming this venerable but rather