When did Rome fall?

What year did the Roman Empire really cease to exist?

Is the Empire officially dead in 410 AD when the eternal city was sacked for the first

time in centuries?

Or should we instead inscribe the year 476 on the Empire's tombstone?

After all, that was the year when the final emperor in the west was deposed by a Gothic

king.

But what of the Eastern Empire?

In the past, historians neatly sectioned off the later phase of Rome's history in the

east by calling it the Byzantine Empire.

But of course, the Byzantines themselves never used such a label.

If you lived in the Empire's capital of Constantinople for the millennium that followed the

west, you just called yourself a Roman.

Well, then perhaps the final death now came for the Roman Empire in 1453 when the city of

Constantinople was finally captured by the Ottoman Turks.

The siege also saw the death of Constantine XI, the last person to hold the title of

Roman Emperor.

But not even that's not quite right.

In the year 800, after all, Charlemagne had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope,

and that title would persist for centuries.

The Holy Roman Empire would continue to be a geopolitical entity, however loose and

ineffectual right up to the time of Napoleon.

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