476 CE · Europe · Empire
Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus in Italy in 476, a conventional marker for the end of the Western Roman Empire. Roman institutions endured in successor kingdoms, while the Eastern Roman Empire continued from Constantinople.
Atlas dossier · Late AntiquityFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
Odoacer’s deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 preceded Theodoric’s defeat of Odoacer in 493. Those events should not be collapsed into an Ostrogothic conquest in 476. Eastern Roman government continued, and later European kingdoms developed through further centuries of warfare, settlement and institutional change.
The Met: Italian Peninsula, 1–500 ↗Silent pan-and-zoom motion derivative of the End of the Western Roman Empire reconstruction; not archival footage.
Enlarge and examine the picturePrimary Atlas editorial reconstruction for End of the Western Roman Empire.
World History in Pictures · Public site artwork. This record does not grant third-party republication rights.
How Atlas classifies this artwork →
Enlarge and examine the pictureDetail crop from the same End of the Western Roman Empire reconstruction; not an independent historical record.
World History in Pictures · Same editorial artwork package
How Atlas classifies this artwork →
Enlarge and examine the pictureContext crop from the same End of the Western Roman Empire reconstruction; not an independent historical record.
World History in Pictures · Same editorial artwork package
How Atlas classifies this artwork →Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
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