In a lot of contemporary paintings, murals, etc, Roman look a lot more like modern day Turks. I know that there was a migration of tribes from the north down into Italy towards the end of the Western Roman Empire, but just wondered if a modern Italian would look anything like an ancient Roman if they stood next to them. Can a majority of the native Italian population today claim heritage back to Roman days?
There was a study in Science (link at bottom) that traced genetic admixture events. There's also a website that's free and a little easier for laymen to read.
If I'm reading it correctly, 41% of their sample of Tuscan genomes comes from an influx of "French-like" and "Cypriot-like" genes between 522CE - 1222CE. Their samples for the rest of Italy look pretty similar, with some exceptions (more Middle Eastern-type genes in Sicily, etc.) So going off of this, the answer is "partly".
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/747.abstract?sid=3a8a4e24-47e8-45c8-bbf8-23c1f6d246f5