My project situates the development of early medieval Rome as anurbs sacra” in its sixth- to ninth-century Mediterranean and Carolingian contexts. I examine how the circulation of saints’ cults through Rome contributed to fashioning Rome into a cosmopolitan cultural center that could radiate abroad its practices of commemoration. Case studies examine the differing circumstances through which “foreign” saints were imported to Rome and subsequently adapted in Rome, illustrating how these cults and their communities helped renegotiate the city’s ancient legacy of Empire, its relationship to Constantinople, and Rome’s—and the papacy’s—place in Christian history. In turn, many of these cults were even exported north of the Alps, securing the city’s claims to preeminence. This process reveals a city enmeshed in a wider world, whose distinctive profile of sanctity was not autochthonous or predestined, but which gradually developed, drawing on the far-flung resources of the medieval world.