The fall of the Western Roman Empire is traditionally placed in 476. That year, the Germanic military leader Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, usually regarded as the last Western Roman emperor, and sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople.
The “fall” was not a single sudden collapse. The Western Empire had been weakened by political instability, civil wars, economic pressures, military challenges, and the settlement of Germanic peoples within Roman territory. Roman authority had already contracted substantially before 476, while successor kingdoms governed much of former Roman lands.
The date 476 is a conventional marker rather than an uncontested end point. The Eastern Roman Empire continued for nearly another thousand years, and Julius Nepos, a rival Western emperor, remained alive and claimed the title until 480. Earlier dates sometimes proposed include the sack of Rome in 410, while historians of late antiquity often emphasize gradual transformation rather than abrupt collapse.