Palatine Hill

According to Roman myth, the she-wolf found Romulus and Remus in the Lupercal cave on this hill, and archaeology shows that people lived here from the 10th century BC. Excavations uncovered huts from the 9th to 7th centuries BC, and in the Republican period many wealthy Romans had their homes on the hill. From 27 BC Augustus built his residence here, beginning centuries of imperial occupation, and the hill became so closely linked with the emperors that its name is the origin of the word 'palace'.

Today the hill is a large open-air museum. You walk among the remains of the House of Augustus and the House of Livia, and through the vast palace rebuilt under Emperor Domitian in the late first century, with its stadium. In the 16th century the Farnese family laid out gardens on the hill, and the Palatine Museum displays finds from the site.

From the edges of the hill you look down on the Roman Forum on one side and the Circus Maximus on the other.