This article deals with the globalization as a process that is not exclusively an economic one, which merits a long-term approach. It analyses Rome as a place which has played an historic role in the construction of the global scale. It shows that after having contributed to unifying the “Ancient World System” under the Roman Empire, the “Eternal City” spread out its political and religious influence to the global scale in the beginning of modern times and has become a laboratory of new interactions of scales, generating direct communication between the local and the global. The end of the article presents Rome, marginalized by the second and third globalizations, as a typical example of a world city, but which is not an economic global city. This study is a plea for an approach to globalization which pays attention to its cultural dimension and to the interplay between scales it implies.