"Rome wasn't built in a day" is an adage attesting to the need for time to create great things. It is the usual English translation of a medieval French phrase, Rome ne fu[t] pas faite toute en un jour, from the collection Li Proverbe au Vilain, published around 1190.^[1] The modern French form is «Rome ne s'est pas faite en un jour». Here is how it may be used in a conversation: "You cannot expect me to finish a project of this scale in 24 hours. Rome wasn't built in a day".

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The expression, (as "Rome was not built in one day") is given in English in John Heywood's A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue (c. 1538),^[2] while Queen Elizabeth I referred to the idea in Latin in an address at Cambridge in 1563.^[3] The present perfect and oratio recta version of the Latin saying—the version one would use for a stand-alone quotation—would be Roma uno die non est condita.

The phrase was used in the title of a 1964 song Sam Cooke^[4][5] also covered by British singer Anne Shelton in 1962.^[6][7]