Skip to main content
Mythos Atlas

Roman PantheonSacred Site

Capitoline Hill

Illustration of Capitoline Hill, a sacred site of the Roman Pantheon
Illustrative imageIllustration of Capitoline Hill. Generated with an AI image model; not a historical artifact. About our images

The smallest and most sacred of Rome's hills, citadel of the earliest city and site of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and Minerva, where triumphs ended and the state's vows were paid.

About Capitoline Hill

Jupiter's citadel

The Capitol is the arx and the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and Minerva. Triumphs ended here. Livy and Ovid remember the hill as a vowed temple after the kings, and as the place geese saved from the Gauls. Tarpeia's rock is an etiology on the same slope. Cult is dense and state-owned. There is no separate "Capitoline myth cycle" beyond the temple's founding and the triad. The hill is where Rome kept its oath to Jupiter.

On the map

Capitoline Hill among other places of the Roman Pantheon.

Sources and further reading

Source notes

These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.

  • Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.55 (temple vow tradition)

    Catalog date: c. 27–9 BCE

About this entry

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. . Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.

Keep exploring

One myth a week, with its sources in a short email. The sign-up form is just below.

Free to read, no ads. Optional support.