I don’t think that Rome does today, either. It did in the days that John wrote the Revelation.
Neither does or did Jerusalem or Cincinnati.
In any apparent sense, none of those cities currently rule over the kings of the earth.
Rome is the only candidate from John’s era. And it is a certainty, and because of that, it must be considered a candidate.
One important question for me is this: what was the dominant religion of Rome at the time John wrote Revelation?
It certainly was NOT Christianity.
We’ve heard of the pantheon of Roman gods, but was there a dominant expression of that religion? a dominant worship?
YMMV, but it would seem to me that the dominant expression was the worship of the emperor. Their refusal to offer even so much as a pinch of incense in worship of the emperor was what got the early Christians in trouble with the state.
The modern equivalent would seem to be the Totalitarian State, as exemplified by fascists, national socialists, and the various international communists.
Rome of John's day could not have been the "harlot" since, as a pagan nation, it was never in a covenant relationship with Jehovah God. Only Israel (Jerusalem) qualified for the designation "great harlot" in the 1st century. Old Jerusalem was the "harlot" who happened to be involved with spiritual fornication with pagan Rome against the Christian church. It was the apostate Jews by the hands of "lawless men" (Rome) who crucified the Messiah (Acts 2:23).
The Reformers saw the spiritual entity we call the Roman Catholic Church as fallen in much the same way as ancient Israel. Rome was in covenant relationship at one time, but had abdicated their position and gone after foreign gods through a gradual process of assimilation of false practices.
>> We’ve heard of the pantheon of Roman gods, but was there a dominant expression of that religion? a dominant worship? <<
By the time of Christ, the emperors seem to have cast aside worrying about whether this god or that would approve of their actions. I’d say that a sort of Nietzchean “might make right” had come to be the de-facto state sect, and indeed, the deification of Emperors after Julius seems to confirm this.
In the days of Luther’s hate-mongering, Rome could sorta fit the bill, given fuzzy enough descriptions. (As I’ve mentioned already, the Vatican isn’t in Rome, but no matter to Luther.) Today, it can’t. I would, however, point out that the United Nations loves to declare its authority over seven continents, when, in fact, there are only five, and only four which are populated. Still waiting to see how many hills Geneva is based on.