Learn Italian: Roma, santuario antico e fulcro della chiesa, è l'emblema dell'Italia. - Rome, an ancient sanctuary and the hub of the church, is the emblem of Italy.

This is the rule of apposition in Italian. When a descriptive noun phrase directly follows and defines a proper noun like Roma, you must omit the article. While English keeps its articles (an ancient sanctuary, the hub), Italian drops them entirely, giving us santuario antico e fulcro della chiesa.

Why does emblema take the article l' if it ends in -a? Isn't it feminine?

Emblema is actually masculine. It belongs to a group of words of Greek origin ending in -ma (like problema, sistema, and programma) that are nearly always masculine in Italian. Because it begins with a vowel, it takes l' instead of il, resulting in l'emblema.

We drop the article for the apposition, but why do we keep it in della chiesa and dell'Italia?

The rule for dropping the article only applies to the main nouns of the appositive phrase (santuario and fulcro). The nouns inside the prepositional phrases that modify them (chiesa and Italia) still follow standard Italian article rules. Since countries and specific institutions usually require definite articles, the preposition di combines with them to form della and dell'.

What is the literal meaning of fulcro?