Palatine Hill

• 1. Introduction

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  The Palatine Hill sits at the exact center of Rome's seven hills, and it holds a remarkable claim: it has been called "the first nucleus of the Roman Empire." Beneath its 63 acres lie the foundations of palaces, temples, and huts stretching back to the 10th century BC. Somewhere under this ground, according to tradition, a she-wolf nursed two abandoned infants. Emperors razed Republican mansions to build their own monuments here. And a word you use every day, perhaps without thinking about it, descends directly from this hill's name. What did the Palatine mean to the Romans who lived on it? What did it become once the emperors claimed it? And what does archaeology keep finding beneath its surface?

• 2. A Hill That Named a Word

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  The Latin historian Livy, who lived from 59 BC to AD 17, attributed the hill's name to Arcadian settlers from a town called Pallantium, itself named for its founder Pallas, son of Lycaon. A competing theory derives the name from the Latin noun palatum, meaning "palate"; the poet Ennius used a related form once to mean "heaven," and scholars have linked it to the Etruscan word for sky, falad.

  Whatever its origin, the name proved extraordinarily generative. The word palace, along with its cousins in Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, all trace back to this hill. The English adjective "palatine," recorded from the 16th century, first described something pertaining to the Caesar's palace, or a person invested with the king's authority. It later shifted to describe the German Palatinate. The office of comes palatinus, a title in Merovingian and Carolingian times, eventually became the German count palatine. And through late renditions of the Matter of France, the word "paladin" entered English to describe any distinguished knight, particularly one of the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne.

• 3. Myth and Foundation

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  Roman mythology placed two of its most vivid foundation stories directly on the Palatine. The cave known as the Lupercal, where the she-wolf Lupa kept Romulus and Remus alive, was said to sit on this hill. It was also here that the adult Romulus chose to found the city, and where he murdered his brother Remus. That killing was not simply a crime in the Roman imagination; it was a ritualistic act that became central to Roman identity and to the mythological origins of the Pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city.

  A second legend placed Hercules on the Palatine as well. After the monster Cacus stole cattle from him, Hercules struck Cacus so hard with his club that the blow formed a cleft on the southeast corner of the hill. Romans later built a staircase there and named it after Cacus.

  The hill also appears in traditions about Pallantium, an ancient city near the Tiber said by Dionysius of Halicarnassus to have been founded by Greeks from Pallantium of Arcadia, about sixty years before the Trojan War, led by a figure named Evander. Virgil states that Evander named the city in honor of his ancestor Pallas. Polybius of Megalopolis, cited by Dionysius, offered a different version: the town was named for Pallas, the son of Heracles and Lavinia, daughter of Evander, and his grandfather raised a tomb to him on the hill. Pallantium eventually merged into Rome, tying the city's origins to ancient Greek heroes.

• 4. Huts, Houses, and Emperors

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  Excavations show people living on the Palatine from the 10th century BC. Digs in 1907 and again in 1948 unearthed huts believed to have served funerary purposes between the 9th and 7th centuries BC, roughly the period when Rome itself was said to be founded. According to Livy, after Sabines and Albans migrated into Rome, the original Romans lived on the Palatine. The hill was also the site of the Lupercalia, an ancient festival.

  During the Republican period, roughly 509 BC to 44 BC, affluent Romans built their houses on the hill. That changed with the start of the Empire in 27 BC. Augustus constructed his palace there and the hill became, gradually, the exclusive preserve of emperors. Tiberius, who reigned from 14 to 37 AD, gave his name to the Domus Tiberiana, though he spent much of his time in his palaces in Campania and Capri. Nero's Domus Transitoria was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. By AD 69 Nero had replaced it with the far larger Domus Aurea. Domitian, reigning from 81 to 96 AD, then built his own palace over the Domus Aurea. The Severan dynasty made significant additions afterward, notably the Domus Severiana.

  Augustus also built a temple to Apollo on the hill. His wife Livia is associated with a house near the Temple of Magna Mater on the western end of the hill, attributed to her based on a generic name on a lead pipe and on its proximity to the House of Augustus. The building is notable for its frescoes.

• 5. Later Ownership and Excavation

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  From the 16th century the Farnese family owned the hill, covering much of it with the Farnese Gardens, which are still partially preserved above the remains of the Domus Tiberiana. At the top of the hill, between the Domus Flavia and the Domus Augustana, the Villa Mattei was built in the same century. Around 1830 a Scottish man named Charles Mills purchased it and converted it into an elaborate neo-Gothic villa. By the end of the 19th century it had become a convent. From 1928 onward part of the building was demolished to permit excavations, and the Palatine Museum was installed in the surviving portion.

  Systematic archaeology on the hill intensified in the 18th century and peaked in the late 19th century, following the proclamation of Rome as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. During Augustus' own reign, an area of the Palatine had already yielded Bronze Age pots and tools in what functioned as an early archaeological expedition; Augustus declared that site the "original town of Rome." Modern archaeology has confirmed Bronze Age settlement predating Rome's founding.

  In 2006, archaeologists announced the discovery of what they believed to be the birthplace of Augustus, the first emperor. A section of corridor and other fragments were found beneath the hill and described as "a very ancient aristocratic house." The two-story structure appeared to have been built around an atrium, with frescoed walls and mosaic flooring, situated on the slope overlooking the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine. On its ground floor, three shops opened onto the Via Sacra. The domus is significant in part for its potential proximity to the Curiae Veteres, the earliest shrine of the curies of Rome.

• 6. The Cave Beneath the Palace

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  In 2007 came one of the most striking announcements in the hill's modern history. Archaeologists restoring the decaying Domus Livia discovered a cavity 16 metres deep beneath it, with a vault richly decorated with mosaics and seashells. They claimed it was the Lupercal, the legendary cave of the she-wolf. If true, the sacred site of Rome's foundation myth had survived for centuries beneath imperial construction.

  Not everyone agreed. Many archaeologists denied the identification on topographic and stylistic grounds. Some argued the grotto was actually a nymphaeum, or an underground triclinium, built during the Neronian period rather than any earlier era. The dispute has not been fully resolved. What the cave represents, regardless of its identity, is the depth of what still lies beneath the Palatine. The hill today is mainly a large open-air museum; the Palatine Museum houses finds from excavations here and from other ancient Italian sites. Every layer uncovered, from Bronze Age huts to a disputed cave of a she-wolf, sits within 131 acres as measured by the Regionary Catalogues of the 4th century.