In the now thirty-year-long history of the construction of a formal dimension of the metropolisation process in Italy, the dynamics of administrative reorganisation triggered by Law 56/2014 saw the emergence of the metropolitan city as an element of rupture in the relations between territorial levels. These dynamics are explored through the Roman case, in which the process of institutionalisation of the metropolitan city presents numerous criticalities with respect to the central city’s value as capital, the organisational structure within the metropolitan territory, the relationship with the Latium Region and the relationship with the State regarding European programming