Palatine Hill

This is where the word palace comes from. The Palatine — Palatium in Latin — was where Rome's emperors built their residences, and it was so synonymous with imperial power that palatium became the generic word for any grand residence in virtually every European language: palace, palazzo, palais, palast, palacio. You are standing on the etymological source of a concept.

According to legend, this is also where it all began. Romulus and Remus were supposedly found here by the she-wolf, in a cave called the Lupercal. In 2007, archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar and endoscopic cameras found what they believe is the Lupercal — a vaulted chamber decorated with mosaics and seashells, buried sixteen metres below the hill. The discovery was announced with great fanfare, then immediately debated. Some archaeologists believe it is just a nymphaeum — a decorative grotto — from a later period. The cave has not been physically accessed and may never be.

The Farnese Gardens at the top of the hill were among the first private botanical gardens in Europe, created in the sixteenth century by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese on the ruins of the Palace of Tiberius. The views from up here are extraordinary — you look directly down into the Roman Forum on one side and out over the Circus Maximus on the other. On a clear day, you can see the Alban Hills in the distance.

Augustus was born on the Palatine and chose to live here rather than in the larger, flashier mansions available to him. His house — the Domus Augusti — has been partially excavated and opened to visitors. The wall paintings inside are vivid reds and blacks in what art historians call the Second Pompeian Style. The emperor who ruled the largest empire on Earth lived in rooms that a modern Roman would consider a nice apartment. The restraint was political — he wanted to be seen as first among equals, not a king.