The aim of this work is to describe the connections between the municipal elite of Rome and the lower classes, during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It demonstrates that the ties linking the elite and the population of different neighborhoods played a fundamental role in the building process of local power and in the access to municipal power. This work points out that the local basis of municipal power was built by the elite thanks to economical and social exchanges with the local population. In the early modern Rome, the municipal nobility class was characterized by a high degree of social mobility and by the opening to the newcomers - a straight definition of "gentiluomo" was not provided, and an exhaustive list of elite members was not established before 1746. To obtain a duty, the applicant should be a known man of his neighborhood: but what give the title of known man? This work highlights the function of the exchange between the upper and lower urban social classes in the process of building local power.
