Elizabeth Heath is a US-born writer and editor based in central Italy. She is the author of several Rome guidebooks and is an avid traveler and travel journalist. Ms. Heath has degrees in Fine Art and Humanities, and completed doctoral studies in Anthropology and Archaeology, with an emphasis on the interpretation of archaeological sites in Italy.

Rome's architectural remains date as far back as the city's founding in the 8th century BCE. The primitive settlement that began on the Palatine Hill grew over the next thousand years to the caput mundi--the capital of the world--the largest, most powerful presence in the ancient Western world.