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In addition to its public-school system, it has several private schools. It has developed as a regional center for the fields of medical care and education. It is the largest city near the center of the triangular area defined by the Interstate highways between Atlanta, Birmingham, and Chattanooga. This project and the American city of Rome were honored by Italy in 1929, when its duce Benito Mussolini sent a replica of the statue of Romulus and Remus nursing from a mother wolf, a symbol of the founding myth of the original Rome. In the late 1920s, a United States company built a rayon plant in a joint project with an Italian company. It shipped the rich regional cotton commodity crop downriver to markets on the Gulf Coast and export overseas. The American Rome developed in the antebellum period as a market and trading city due to its advantageous location on the rivers. The city has developed on seven hills with the rivers running between them, a feature that inspired the early European-American settlers to name it for Rome, the longtime capital of Italy that was also built on seven hills. National leaders such as Major Ridge and John Ross resided here before Indian Removal in 1838. Later the Cherokee people expanded into this area from their traditional homelands to the east and northeast. Because of its strategic advantages, this area was long occupied by the historic Creek. It developed on former indigenous territory at the confluence of the Etowah and the Oostanaula rivers, which together form the Coosa River. Rome was founded in 1834, after Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, and the federal government committed to removing the Cherokee and other Native Americans from the Southeast. It is the largest city in Northwest Georgia and the 22nd-largest city in the state. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 37,713. Located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, it is the principal city of the Rome, Georgia, metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses all of Floyd County. Rome is the largest city in and the county seat of Floyd County, Georgia, United States.
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