The Seven Hills Of Rome: The Birth Of A Myth

There are a lot of monuments that we can admire going on a few days trip to Rome. Once in a lifetime even a short travel to Rome is obligatory.

If you have never been in the Eternal City, the advice is absolutely to start booking a room in one Rome hotel, so to be able to admire with your own eyes so many architectural beauties to leave breathless. In this section we will talk about the seven hills of Rome, one of the characteristics and one of the most famous tradition of this wonderful city.

According to the tradition, Rome was built on seven hills, all located East of the River Tiber. These seven hills would represent so the heart of the city. The seven hill are the Aventine, the Capitoline, the Caelian, the Esquiline, the Palatine, the Quirinal and the Viminal hill. These hills did have a very important role on the ancient roman mythology, religion and politics.
According to the tradition, Roma was founded by Romulus on the Palatine hill. In fact, right on the top and on the foot of this hill several finds have been found, these finds could be dated back to the age of the first urban settlements. This finds can be also easily admired at the Palatine hill museum, for whoever wants to sleep in Rome for some days.

The Palatine hill area turned out to be inhabited since the I millennium B.C. At the beginning there was just a small village, all surrounded by wetlands. This first urban agglomerate stayed almost unchanged for a couple of centuries, it was the so-called "Roma Quadrata" (Rome square), because of the roughly rhomboid shape of the top of the hill it was located on. The expansion, in the VIII century A.D, of the original unit and the fusion with some tribes located nearby originated that city on the seven hills, however they were not the traditionally known seven hills, but just some minor heights, that are the two of Palatine hill, the Caelian and the Velian, and the three Esquiline west heights.

Only from the IV century A.D., thanks to the building of the walls, built under the reign of king Servius Tullius, an expanded city was enclosed, that contained also the other hills, that means the traditional seven hills.

Seven is a recurrent number in the ancient roman mythology. The Latin terms Septimontium (that means seven hills) was used by the ancient Romans to celebrate a religious festival in the area of the seven hills, that would be exactly the area of Rome. From the ancient time, this special festival, related to the seven hills, was created, it seems, by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome after Romulus. This festival in practice was a long procession along the seven hills with sacrifices to celebrate the 27 Argei’s sepulchers, that were on those hills. According to the tradition, the Argei were the heroic Greek princes who, arrived in Lazio following Hercules, would have conquered the hills on which Rome would have been built from the Sicels and the Liguri populations.

These are just some of the stories and legends you could live fist hand, if you will decide to spend a few days in some nice Rome apartments. Rome is a wonderful city, at every step you could find some incredible monuments and some past traces. Histories and legends on this Eternal City are countless, from its foundation up to our days, Rome has always been a magic city, in which everything can happen.

This article was written by Martina Meneghetti with support from rental vacation apartment rome for any information, please visit apartment rental rome or for insurance visit flat in rome .