A slow start by Hamilton from pole position saw him slip down to sixth place on the opening lap, with Rosberg taking the race lead.
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Hamilton got off the line at the same time as the other cars but immediately fell behind, dropping to sixth before the first corner.
Nico Rosberg won the Italian Grand Prix virtually unchallenged on Sunday after Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton frittered away his pole position with a poor start.
“Thank you very much guys”, said Rosberg. “So it was all there”.
Hamilton had led Rosberg by 19 points before the previous grand prix at Spa but lost 10 points there after starting from the back of the grid; here, he lost another seven.
“I’m feeling great, the race is on with Lewis. It’s always going to be a great battle and I look forward to whatâs to come”.
The Mercedes driver set a series of fastest laps to build a gap as Vettel and Raikkonen struggled to keep pace.
The fault appeared to be his, as he hinted over the team radio, even if he said afterwards that he had done everything as normal and the clutch was to blame. “That’s the best I could do with such a loss at the start”.
Like Hamilton, Verstappen paid a high price for a poor start which saw him slump to 11th. “We just had an over-production of torque and the wheels were spinning from the get-go”.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who mistakenly put on the winner’s cap before the podium and handed it on to Rosberg, finished third to a much bigger roar from the fans yearning for a first Ferrari victory of the season at their home race.
The Mercedes man from Hertfordshire found himself back down in fourth place again when he switched from the soft tyre to the mediums on lap 25, with the two Ferrari cars ahead of him still to stop again.
Gobbled up by Rosberg, both Ferrari drivers and then the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo on the long run down to the opening chicane, Hamilton was left facing an nearly impossible task of winning for a third year on the trot in Italy.
Hamilton’s sluggish start at Monza was not his first and followed similar problems for him in Australia, Bahrain, Spain and Canada while Rosberg was the victim of clutch gremlins in Melbourne, Hungary and Germany. “At the end the answer was really clear”.
Ricciardo, choosing super-soft tyres for the final stint rather than the softs on the Williams, closed in after their final stops and pulled a brilliant overtaking move from a long way back into Turn One at the start of lap 47 to take the place.
Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Felipe Massa and Nico Hulkenberg rounded out the top 10.
On a hazy late summer day, red-clad Ferrari fans lined the entire track, with banners dedicated to current and former drivers. “Michael, all our thoughts for you and your family”, read one banner dedicated to Michael Schumacher, who remains in secluded recovery from serious head injuries he suffered in a skiing accident in December 2013.
During the singing of the national anthem, fighter jets flew over the main straight, coloring the sky in the green, white and red of the Italian flag.
Nasr was given a 10-seconds penalty.
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Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz led Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Renault’s Kevin Magnussen home, as Pascal Wehrlein joined Palmer and Nasr in retirement when told to switch off his Manor’s Mercedes power unit.
