The Capitoline Hill is still one of the most famous hills of Rome, an area that is also named Campidoglio. Imagine how today usually we speak about this place because it is the seat of the mayor of Rome, the hill where stands the Palazzo Senatorio, the city hall of the city. But keep in mind how there is something more that it could not be see, something that you can just breath coming here: the long history of Rome. When I'm here with my tourists I always try to lead them over the eras, to understand how some areas of the Eternal City could save the memories of different pasts.

First of all Piazza del Campidoglio, with this curious trapezoidal shape, was completely designed as we can see today by Michelangelo, who also projected the monumental flight of steps (called the Cordonata), which is used to reach the space between the three buildings that make up the Campidoglio (the name also used to indicate that is, politically speaking, the seat of the Municipality of Rome). But what we do not see is that this hill actually consists of two hills, joined together through a small valley. In it, in archaic times, there was a grove sacred to the Romans called Asylum. In addition, the archaeological evidence brought to light an ancient temple, later restored several times during the roman era, dedicated to a quite cryptic deity named Veiovis. Today some little remains of the temple, and a headless statue that, perhaps, showed this Veiovis, are part of the exhibition of the Capitoline Museums, which develop along the entire Capitoline Hill.

However, returning to a more geological consideration, the two heights mentioned above are defined Arx and Capitolium. The first is still visible today, because if we see the Basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, which is located on the top of the Arx, we can understand how it is in a raised position with respect to the floor. The second hill, the Capitolium, which today is topped by the Palazzo Senatorio (the headquarters of the Mayor of Rome), while two thousand years ago it was occupied by the Temple of Jupiter (or of the Capitoline Triad), one of the most important of the ancient Rome (click here to discover more). But imagine that the Capitoline Hill represents an example of how a place could be perfect in order to find a primitive village, because here over the years were found several elements that helped the archeologists to understand how here there was a human community even at the XIV century b.C., so centuries and centuries before the official foundation of Rome. Why? Because the hill is completely surrounded by rocky cliffs, and the only way to reach the top in an easy way is to climb the side that faces the Roman Forum, so the centre of the modern city. 

Moreover there is a legend that touches the temple and, especially, the origin of the hill. The word Capitoline is, according to tradition, descendeding from the Latin word caput, which we know today as the association with the famous Caput Mundi, the two words used for centuries to indicate the supremacy of Rome in the ancient world. Well, that said it would have a source. It is said, indeed, that in the course of the sixth century b.C., when they started to dig for the foundation of the Temple of Jupiter, was found a human skull. The soothsayers named aruspici, ancient etruscan expert ministers, thus “read” in the skull of a divine message that is precise. Rome would become, to all effects, the most powerful city in the world, the Caput Mundi, in fact. Exactly as shown by the skull,  a word that in Latin is expressed with...Caput!